Vladimir Orlov - Danilov the Violist

A worker who seemed familiar to Danilov (they exchanged nods) walked past and dropped several pots with seedlings. Danilov picked them up. "Where is he going?" thought Danilov. To the Flying Saucer Hothouse. In the warm air under glass roofs they grew on green stems. Small and large. They really did look like saucers. But of a larger size. About as big as the late Queen Mary. In the hangar behind the hothouse were the means for delivering the saucers to Earth. Many demons on the Nine Layers were critical of the flying saucers, and considered them just fooling around. They were. But why not fool around?

The saucers did not give Danilov any particular pleasure. Well, they're growing, so what? The acquaintance explained to Danilov that recently sixteen new hotbeds were set up, in which medium-size saucers could be grown in seventeen days. Before, they needed twenty-two or more.

"Will the quality be affected?" Danilov asked just in case.

"It shouldn't," the hothouse worker said. Not too confi-dendy. Then he added angrily: "Oh, if we could only use natural manure for fertilizer instead of these powders!"

Danilov was in total agreement about the manure. Danilov had encountered the fruits of these hothouses on Earth. They flew beautifully, mysteriously, and silently, eliciting contradictory feelings in humans. Right behind the winter garden Danilov saw a sign: "Department of the Bermuda Triangle."

He pulled on the doorknob. In vain. Perhaps no one was in at the department. Perhaps they were all in the field.

He smelled pies. Danilov followed his nose and realized that he was approaching the Academy of Home Economics. Life had given Danilov some experience as a cook, polisher, and dishwasher, and he headed for the academy with interest. The employees of the academy worked with relish, even though their research and discoveries did not turn the world upside down but only caused minor damage. Apparently they liked their work. Some wrote, others stood by kitchen stoves and Primus stoves and kerosene burners; others squirted liquids onto parquet and mosaic floors; others set fire to wallpaper; others tried to vacuum up lace curtains, and still others, having spread snow on carpets, tried to beat dust from them with ramrods. Everywhere the work was serious. Scientists were compiling fake recipes for humans. The recipes had to look authentic, but one or two ingredients were incorrect. The fake recipes were sent to Earth and utilized in cookbooks for housewives, and in the pages of family magazines. On their desks Danilov saw a Philadelphia publication, and a women's weekly from Ouagadougou, and Woman Worker (which Danilov always leafed through at the Muravlyovs'). Now they were about to send down to Earth suggestions for making farina dumplings. "Some magazine is really going to get it," thought Danilov. "Angry letters will pour in from housewives whose dumplings fell apart in their pots! Well, at least Klavdia probably won't try to make these dumplings," he thought for some reason.

Turning a corner, he came upon the "Withering Laboratory." "Am I lost?" Danilov wondered. "Or is this some other withering?" Of course it didn't matter. They were developing methods for withering away love. Once upon a time the withering potions were made as bad-tasting powders. Now the potions were sweet and gooey. Danilov ate a light blue ball and said, "Not bad ..."

Fiery letters proclaimed the "Institute of Optimal Methods for Combing Mermaids' Green Hair." "Why such a mannered name?" thought Danilov. In the reception room sat a guard with a moustache, woolen leggings, and a smoker's cough. He let Danilov in reluctantly, demanding written permission, but Danilov said in an iron whisper, "I'm from Tertius, with ideas," and the guard relented. Danilov soon realized that there were good reasons for having an intimidating sentry. Many rooms in the institute had only numbers on their doors. Occasionally there were signs that led him to think the institute's name did not represent completely the breadth of the research it encompassed. For instance, Danilov was very interested by the division of mermaid sexopathology. It had subdivisions for Rhine, Missouri, Volga-Kamsk, Danube, and other mermaids. And there were subdivisions for shallow-water mermaids. Danilov grew excited: What if among the mermaids assigned to the institute he ran into one he knew -- a pretty one, naturally? He put a halt to such thinking: Really, of all the things to think about!

Then he saw a sign: "Scientific Group for Problems of Tickling." There was a lot of work to do here. With the tempo of today's lovemaking, it couldn't be easy for mermaids to find a pause for tickling. And if you don't tickle the client, then how do you turn him into a drowned man? And what about the memods of tickling? Nowadays, many once-popular methods seemed silly.

Danilov looked into the lab of the scientific group. On an Empire sofa, which could have come from the salon of Mme. Recamier, sat four mermaids in elastic costumes of the kind used in productions of Sadko. Their tails were in nylon sheaths with zippers, and only one had green hair; the others' hair were dyed red, violet, and silver, and they held umbrellas. When they saw Danilov, they reached out to him. "Oh, no! They'll tickle me!" Once upon a time he would have agreed to this experiment, but now he thought it wiser to run off.

Once again he noticed the sign about drowned musicians. They had an entire lab to themselves. There was logic in that. Drowned musicians had played for ages in the orchestras for water sprites and mermaids. Danilov looked around and realized that the main concern of the lab was the repertoire of such orchestras. Danilov heard Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, and others, a lullaby by Mozart, and a memorable folk song. This music must have been requested by the mermaids. They had to be kept happy. They were working in poisoned waters nowadays. "Enough mermaids!" thought Danilov. "I have to find New Margarit." He had to walk and walk to reach New Margarit.

Danilov hurried past the laboratories of Earthquakes, Sun Spots, Football Agitation, Lost Purses, False Pangs of Conscience, Stock-Market Crashes, Selection of Influenzas, Breakage of the Axis of Revolution of the Stars of the Big Dipper, Arguments over Prizes, and Spoiling the Kleiperon-Mendeleev Equation...

At last he came to the lakes, and then the suspension bridges, and then a gray castle that was the Institute of Basic Fundamental Knowledge. Here the doorman refused to allow Danilov in without a pass. Danilov grew angry and cursed the guards. He went around to the corner of the wall, spat on his hands, and crawled over, thereby dirtying his jeans.

Danilov had been at the institute once and remembered the layout. He learned that New Margarit was expected at any moment.

Danilov could not sit in some reception area, so he set off for a walk through the institute. He chatted with former classmates, and he listened to loud arguments among the learned. The theoreticians were working not only on global, intra- , and intergalactic problems, but also on more specialized issues, which as far as Danilov could see should have been solved by the laboratories they had come from.

The same group was extremely successful, Danilov heard, in its research under the code names "Brass Button" and "French Baguette." Once upon a time in many localities an evil wood goblin could easily be chased away by shooting a brass button at him. So over the centuries, the institute had come up with a thing or two against brass buttons. And now there was a need to protect demon workers of a more modern makeup than wood goblins from people.

As for "French Baguette," that had been brought up to date, too. Sometimes the activity of the workers from the Nine Layers had to be publicized among the Earth populace. Say some peasant flew somewhere on the back of a wood spirit. To the city. But who would believe him? So the peasant would take a French baguette out of his pocket: See, I told you I was in the city; here's the French bread. And all doubts were put to rest. Now you can fly without a wood spirit and to other places besides the city, but in order to convince people, you still had to show them some kind of French baguette. Theory couldn't stand still here, either.