Arkady Strugatsky - Definitely Maybe

This information made Comrade Weingarten’s head spin, but he nevertheless realized that the directorship was, first of all, just a bird in the bush, and if and when it became a bird in the hand it would, secondly, get V. A. Weingarten out of creative lab work for at least a year and a half, maybe two. And meanwhile the Nobel Prize was the Nobel Prize, buddies.

Therefore Weingarten simply promised to think it over and went back to his lab and the mysterious reverse transcriptase and the unending brouhaha. Just two days later he was called into the chief academician’s office and quizzed about his current project. (“I kept a tight lock on my lips, buddies, I was extremely controlled.”) It was suggested that he drop this questionable nonsense and take up the problem of such and such, which was of great economic significance, and therefore promising great material and spiritual rewards, which the chief academician was willing to bet his own head on.

Flabbergasted by all these vistas suddenly yawning before him for no reason at all, Weingarten made the mistake of bragging about them at home, and not simply at home, but in front of his mother-in-law, whom he calls Cap because she really was a captain second class retired. And the sky darkened above his head. (“Buddies, from that evening on, my house turned into a sawmill. They sawed at me night and day, demanding that I accept immediately, and accept both offers at that.”)

Meanwhile, the lab, despite the occasional turmoil, continued to produce a heap of results, one more amazing than the next. Then his aunt died, a distant relative on his father’s side, and while clearing up the estate, Weingarten discovered a chest in the attic of her house in Kavgolova stuffed with Soviet coins out of circulation since 1961. You have to know Weingarten to believe this, but as soon as he found the chest, he lost all interest in everything else, up to and including his languishing Nobel Prize. He holed up at home and spent four days poring over the contents of the chest, deaf to the phone calls from the institute and to his mother-in-law’s nagging speeches. He found fantastic specimens in that chest. Oh, luxury! But that was not the point.

When he was through with this chest and came back to work, he saw that the discovery was, so to speak, discovered. Of course, there was much that was unclear and it all had to be formulated—no mean feat, by the way—but there could be no more doubt: He had made his discovery. Weingarten started working like a squirrel on a wheel. He put an end to the squabbles at the lab (“Buddies, I threw them all out to go to hell on their vacations!”), moved Cap and the girls out to the country in twenty-four hours, canceled all his appointments, and had just got settled down at home to do the finishing strokes, when came the day before yesterday.

The day before yesterday, just as Weingarten started to work, that redhead showed up at the apartment—a short, coppery fellow with a very pale face, encased in a buttoned-up black coat of ancient cut and style. He came out of the children’s room and, while Val just gaped at him in silence, sat on the edge of the desk and started talking. Without any preamble he announced that a certain extraterrestrial civilization had been watching him, V. A. Weingarten, for quite some time, following his scientific work with attention and anxiety. That the latest work of the aforementioned Weingarten was making them very anxious. That he, the redhead, was empowered to ask V. A. Weingarten to immediately drop the project and destroy all his papers relating to it.

There is absolutely no need for you to know why and wherefore we demand this, the red-haired man said. You should be told that we have tried other means, to make it seem completely natural. You should not be under the impression that the offered directorship, the new project, the discovery of the coins, or even the vacation incident in the labs were in any way purely accidental. We tried to stop you. However, since we were only able to hold you up, and not for long, we were forced to embark on an extreme measure, such as my visit to you. You should also know that all the offers made to you were and are valid and that you may still take them up if our demands are met. And, in case you do agree, we are willing to help satisfy your petty, and completely understandable, desires that arise from your human nature. As a token of the promise, allow me to give you this small gift.

And with those words, the redhead pulled a package out of thin air and tossed it on the desk in front of Weingarten. It turned out to contain marvelous stamps, whose value could not even be imagined by someone who was not a professional philatelist.

Weingarten, continued the red-haired man, should in no way think that he was the only earthling being watched by the supercivilization. There were at least three people among Weingarten’s friends whose work was about to be nipped in the bud. He, the redhead, could name such names as Dmitri Alekseevich Malianov, astronomer; Zakhar Zakharovich Gubar, engineer; and Arnold Pavlovich Snegovoi, physicist. They were giving V. A. Weingarten three days, starting right now, to think it over, after which the supercivilization would feel that it had the right to employ the rather harsh “measures of the third degree.”

“While he was telling me all of this,” Weingarten said, “buddies, all I was thinking about was how he had gotten into the apartment without a key. Especially since I had the door bolted. Could he be some thief who had gotten in a long time ago and got bored hiding under the couch? Well, I’ll show him, I thought. But while I was thinking all of that, the redhead finished up his little speech.” Weingarten paused for effect.

“And flew out the window,” Malianov said, gritting his teeth.

“That’s for your flying out the window!” Weingarten, unembarrassed by the child, made an eloquent gesture. “He simply vanished!”

“Val,” said Malianov.

“I’m telling you, buddy! He was sitting right in front of me on the desk. I was just about to give it to him on the kisser, without even standing up… when he was gone! Like in the movies, you know?”

Weingarten grabbed the last piece of sturgeon and shoved it into his mouth.

“Moam?” he said. “Moam mooam?” He swallowed with difficulty and, blinking his tear-filled eyes, went on: “I’m a little calmer now, buddies, but back then, let me tell you, I leaned back in the chair, closed my eyes, and remembered his words; everything in me was quivering and shaking, like a pig’s tail. I thought I was going to die right then and there. Nothing like that had ever happened to me. I somehow made it to my mother-in-law’s room, grabbed her valerian drops—didn’t help. Then I saw she had bromides, and I took those, too.”

“Wait,” Malianov said irritably. “Drop the clowning. I’m in no mood… What really happened? But please, without the red-haired aliens!”

“Chum,” Weingarten said, eyes bulging to the limit. “I’ll cross myself, on my Pioneer’s honor!” He made the sign of the cross, clumsily, with a Catholic accent. “I wasn’t in any mood for joking myself…”

Excerpt 12…. collected stamps, very energetically. Weingarten once took away with a satisfied purr the remnants of the stamp collection Malianov had as a teenager. He knew about stamps. He lost his tongue for a while. Yes, of course the royal collection had all of them. Mr. Stulov in New York had a few of these too. But if you just take the state collection… without even mentioning simple collectors…

“Counterfeit,” said Malianov finally. Contemptuously, Weingarten said nothing. “Well, then, brand new.”

“You fool,” Weingarten barked and put away the book.

Malianov couldn’t think of a comeback. If all this had been a lie or even the simple truth, rather than the horrible truth, Weingarten would have done it just the other way around. He would have shown them the stamps first, and then made up and given them that more-or-less accurate bull story about them.