Vladimir Orlov - Danilov the Violist

"I think I will," said Karmadon as he downed his Northern Lights straight from the botde and brought a too long dead sprat to his lips.

The water ran in the bathroom. Danilov finished off the chicken tabaka and was tackling a saddle of lamb, which he had summoned from Sofia -- the city, not the restaurant on Mayakovsky Square, where even Danilov's will could not create a saddle of lamb out of stewed beef or rabbit. For the entire week Danilov had eaten nothing but pastry and sandwiches, and now he was squandering the entertainment expenses.

It grew quiet in the bathroom. Danilov worried that Karmadon might flood the downstairs apartment. He was perfectly capable of making the bath deeper by a mile or two or as much as he wanted and then playing around in its watery depths, while the residents downstairs ran around with rags and buckets.

"Karmadon!" Danilov called.

Karmadon did not reply.

"I hope he hasn't drowned," Danilov thought in fright. "Karmadon!"

"Huh?" came a voice from the bathroom. "Oh ... sorry ... I dozed off... What's up?"

"I, uh ... shall I scrub your back?"

"All right," Karmadon replied wanly.

"He's so changed," Danilov thought. "He was always so energetic and carefree, a real live wire, and now ..."

Only Karmadon's head showed above the water, and after soaping up a stiff brush, Danilov asked Karmadon to raise himself up. Karmadon did so with difficulty, and Danilov was taken aback by his body. As Danilov learned at school, Karmadon, like any demon, was merely a particular spiritual expression of matter and could take on any form that corresponded to his wishes or circumstances. Thus he could look like bird droppings, or a trouser button, or a chipmunk, or even a dot or a trajectory or nothing at all. Out of habit and to facilitate socializing, demons in their circle preferred to place themselves inside human bodies. And naturally on Earth Karmadon had to resemble a human. And right now he did have basically a human body, down to the tattoo on his right shoulder, which read "Moderation in All Things." But here and there, in the most unexpected places, extruded metallic things, or maybe they weren't metallic. Danilov saw objects on Karmadon's body: Some of them were inanimate; others, with feelers and suction cups, moved, jerked, turned blue, and seemed to gasp. A strange bolt, like a broken sword, stuck out from Karmadon's rib, and it swayed, emitting a high whine. Danilov asked: "What's the matter with you? I won't disturb that with a sponge."

"What?" Karmadon said and looked at himself. A twinge of dismay crossed his face and he shook his head. "That again ... I can't get rid of all traces of Bootes... I nod off, and it comes back!"

He swallowed something white, shuddered, grimaced as if he were in pain, and became fully human again. The water gushed up from the tub, and when the spouts fell, it was dark blue.

At last Karmadon, pink and quiet, sat in a bathrobe in the kitchen. He drank the mineral water so beloved by his father. Danilov munched salted almonds and did not ask any questions. Karmadon was mostly silent, but he spoke occasionally -- always about the work conditions in the constellation Bootes.

Karmadon had been sent to the planet Beta-Mol, or as they called it in their reports, Sleepy Mole. A bit larger than Earth in size, the planet was called Glira by its inhabitants and was exclusively made of molybdenum. Even its spiritual values were molybdenum, and that went without saying for its material ones. Karmadon could not explain to Danilov why, and Danilov really couldn't bother his head over it anyway, but all the gaseous, viscous, weeping, hanging, melting, and dancing creatures -- all of them on Glira were made of molybdenum. The planet teemed with living creatures, brothers of Earthlings in reason, Danilov learned, but they all lived, moved, labored, reproduced, and multiplied not on a curved solid, but inside a viscous world, and their paths were inscrutable. To Earthlings, the Boфteians (who call themselves Glirans) would look like pig iron, while the sight of an earthling would disgust Glirans. The spheroid viscous state of the planet had a general reason as well, or a general spirit, and that was called nothing other than "The Dream" in Karmadon's report. Yes, the pig-iron Boфteians moved, fed, thought about things, invented, created civilizations, plotted against others -- but it all happened to them in an inpenetrable molybdenum dream. Each being had the ability to meld into others, to flow through a whole group of similar beings, and then their dreams became commingled, and in those dreams arose new plots and cataclysms, and thus their civilization progressed.

Karmadon was given a special assignment ("Of a moral character," was all he told Danilov), and how difficult it was for him to penetrate the dreams of the Booteians. He wasn't even allowed to sleep himself! Karmadov struggled for quite a long time, and he couldn't get inside a single molybdenum rational being. Then he somehow managed to squeeze into the dream of a naпve Booteian-Gliran. And off he went! Karmadon's adventures began: He was made a deputy, and they wanted to give him a pension, and they awarded him a molybdenum crystal first class. But for all those years he got no sleep! He watched dreams and was implicated in them, but he himself did not sleep! Even when he got back home and was sitting in the Chancery for Moral Reconstruction and writing reports on his work, he could not allow himself to yawn, even once. He did not want to ruin his reputation as an ace in special assignments. And he wanted to prove to himself that he was capable of bigger things.

Here Danilov interrupted with a question that would definitely have been posed by Misha Muravlyov:

"Don't these Booteians, these Glirans, want to establish contact with Earth?"

"They might want to, but nothing will come of it," Karmadon said. "And why would you want to contact them, when you can't wake them up? And why would they want to contact you? I've made up such dreams for them now...."

Karmadon yawned again, and his left eye grew cloudy. "He's really changed," thought Danilov. "He's gotten older or else he's truly dead tired. And he used to be so much fun."

"Let me put you to bed," Danilov said. "You'll get some sleep here. You could sleep the whole two weeks, if you want."

"No, Danilov," Karmadon said, "I can't weaken now ... otherwise, how can I be an ace? Forgive me, but I've got to leave now... It is necessary for me to be a blue bull for a while."

"You're bored with me ... or I'm ..."

"Don't take offense ... It's just that in the past few years on Sleepy Mole I had only one thought: I'll get a bonus trip to Earth and I'll be a blue bull there ... just for a week. Then I'll come back..."

"Where do you plan to be one?"

"Somewhere -- somewhere warm ..."

"But I'm responsible for your safety."

"Danilov," Karmadon said with a smile, a rather condescending one, "I've become strong and cruel."

"I'm not planning to protect you. But I could save you from a few embarrassing situations with a word of warning... It's warm in Africa now. But they'll try to make you plow there, and you'll look strange wandering around on your own. They love bulls in Spain and in South America, but they love them in a special way, and what if you find you don't like that love once you're in a corrida?"

"Is that really important?"

"Well, suit yourself..."

"Let's have a drink for the road! And I'm off."

The bottle of Northern Lights reappeared in Karmadon's hands and a squashed sprat floated in the air near his mouth. Danilov lifted his glass of cognac. They drank. They ate. Karmadon, just as he was -- in bathrobe and slippers over bare feet -- went toward the door. He was faithful to the ancient superstition of his ancestors and always vanished through the same opening he had used to enter.