A. Belyaev - Classics fantasy – 6

– Only brush.

– Here the floor is washed automatically – Li as if justified himself. – But hair, they… they can litter pipes. It is better to burn them. You know that, we will burn also your disgusting suit.

– What? To burn a suit? No, I thank you!

– But why it to you? I to you will cause a fine suit of our breed.

Near me there was one more door. Li opened it and told:

– In this small room there is a waste incineration furnace. I you very much ask to throw hair, a suit into the furnace and…

– You know that, we disinfected it, killed all microbes of the twentieth century, we will leave it as a museum subject – I used cunning, wishing to save the suit from fire of this house crematorium.

– Well, I agree. Let me take of you measurements. Your suit will be whole, but you after all will put on another. Here so. You much above me. What color you prefer?

“I would be good in golubenky, devil take it” – I thought.

– Black, gray, as a last resort olive.

– Well. I will cause a suit. For now undress and swim for a while in the pool. Throw linen into this hatch in a floor.

Li left.

I undressed and began to go down on white steps to water. But hardly fingers of my leg touched water, I screamed from surprise, having felt pricks thousands of needles.

– Forgive – I heard Li’s voice about myself though it was not in the room – I forgot to warn you – water of an elektrizovan. We cannot do without it, electricity is a massage for our nerves. I will reduce current now.

Li entered, turned the lever, undressed and plunged into the water.

Having swum for a while and having dived, we left. Bathing in electric water miraculously refreshed me.

– Now one more electrization – Li told. – Sit down on this chair.

I obediently took seat on the chair standing on the black ebonite platform. And suddenly since the ends of rods of “umbrella” streams of pale lilac light zastruitsya.

– Electric shower. Well?

– Yes… yes… about – it is very good – I told, feeling as the criminal sentenced to death on an electric chair. However everything was safely.

– Now here here – Li continued to dispose of me – pass to this case. This is, so to speak, the automatic doctor-controller. Give your hand. So. It here.

Li applied to my pulse and heart of a plate, attached to cords, and turned off light. On the screen there was a shining curve, it noted blows of my heart.

– Yes, heart at you is a little not as it should be – Li told. – Let’s look at a stomach, lungs.

On the screen the image of my internals appeared.

– Lungs as it should be. But the stomach is strongly reduced. Obviously, on one chemical food pills it is difficult for you to exist – the organism did not get used yet. I will order to you something like porridge and mousse. At us also not still passed to pills. There are fans of more “essential” food though all these dishes very easy and semi-fluid.

Li lit fire.

I sighed, having remembered a good piece of meat. But it was not necessary and to dream of it. They for the sake of me will not kill the last cow of a zoo?

– Well, at you everything is relative as it should be. And I will accept electromassage.

Li, улегшись on a long bench, pressed the button, and suddenly from under a bench some hands cores terminating in spheres, handles, rakes got out. All these “hands” attacked on Li’s body and began to rumple it, to rub, poshlepyvat, drum, iron.

From outside it seemed, perhaps fell into clutches some terrible arachnoid insect. Well, perhaps saved me though from this pleasure. I, probably, would shout for fear, broke joints of these metal paws and fell down from a bench.

But Li felt excellently, turned over with a side sideways and repeated:

– Well, perfectly!

At last this execution came to an end. Li quickly rose and put on in a pure blue tunic.

– And here to you – he told, giving me the same tunic from silvery fabric.

I put on. And when looked in the big mirror fixed into a wall did not recognize himself. At me not only head, but also eyebrow hair disappeared. The suit gave me the strangest look. “To seem on Kuznetsk in such look” – I thought.

– Now five minutes of rest. You lay down on this wicker chair.

We laid down. Light went out again. Suddenly the wall against us as if fell, opening a view of the seashore. The moon lit breaks of waves. Palm trees quietly shook. I admired a show.

– I love this corner of the Mediterranean Sea – Li told. – And often I cause it. Transfer on radio – he added. – Let’s have a rest, and I will acquaint you with my wife.

– You are married?

– Yes, we go.

The screen went out. Light lit up again. We left a bathroom.

Having opened an adjacent door, Li told:

– Ying, here the person from the past with which you wanted to get acquainted.

I entered the room which I took for a lobby, and saw Li’s wife. It stood at an opposite wall. Having hospitably smiled to me, she made welcome gesture a hand.

I went to the young beautiful woman, on a habit giving a hand. But she did not raise the hand, and I remembered that at these new people of handshake are not accepted. I took still a step and hit the head against an invisible barrier. The woman burst out laughing, but immediately constrained the laughter and addressed the husband:

– Li, you unless did not warn our guest?

– I believed that he already got used to our screens – Li told.

Again screen! I was sure that I see the living woman, but not her image.

– I will leave you so far – Ying told – in ten minutes we will have supper.

The screen went out. When the room was lit with usual light, I inspected it and once again was surprised. The room was three times less bathroom and is absolutely deprived of furniture. Naked walls without uniform ledge, ornament. Really it is the only living room?

Li smiled, having noticed my surprise.

– Your dwelling is very modest – I told.

– But it is convenient and hygienic.

Li pressed a leg one checker of a parquet floor, and suddenly from a floor the round table on a round column and two chairs rose.

– You sit down – Li told.

We took seat.

– Ask – with a smile offered Li.

Really, I had to ask endlessly.

– Ale spoke to me – I began – that you have no government, there are no employees, there are no officials. But how you conduct the economy? Here you caused to me a suit. Means, someone has to keep account.

– The account at us is put is exemplary. All this becomes very simply, mechanically now. I cause the necessary thing. Mechanically she moves from a warehouse and is sent on a pneumatic pipe here. At the same time the counter celebrates a holiday of this thing. The same automatic counter sums up the results. And by the end of the year we know what need at us for Tom’ or other subject what annual gain, how many it is necessary to prepare for the future. We have no changing fashion, and some stocks pass from year to year. So in all consumer goods, up to flying cars.

– But there has to be some control? Unless you have no abuses at all?

Li in perplexity raised eyebrows.

– What abuses can be? I will call to myself the excess air boat? Why it to me? Unless I can depart on two at once? I can also sell it to nobody, first, because we have no money, and secondly because everyone can take that it is necessary for it. For the same reason there is no sense to steal or appropriate. We have no crimes of this sort at all. And not that we became more moral, and just crimes lost any purpose. We have everything that it is necessary to us. Here you told that the dwelling is very modest. But what is necessary for healthy life? Light. You see fine lighting for night.