Arkady Strugatsky: The Final Circle of Paradise

“My name is Len,” he announced.

“Greetings, Len,” I said absent-mindedly. “I am called Ivan. Come on in — although I was going out to have dinner.

“You haven’t had dinner yet?”

“No.”

“That’s good. Go ask your mother’s permission and we’ll be off “

“It’s too early,” he said.

“What’s too early? To have dinner?”

“No, to go. School doesn’t end for another twenty minutes.” He was silent again. “Besides, there’s that fat fink with the braid.”

“He’s a bad one?’ I asked.

“Yeah,” said Len. “Are you really leaving now?”

“Yes, I am,” I said, and took the ball of string from my pocket. “Here, take it. And what if Mother comes out first?”

He shrugged.

“If you are really leaving,” he said, “would it be all right if I stayed in your place?”

“Go ahead, stay.”

“There’s nobody else here?”

“Nobody.”

He still didn’t come to me to take the string, but let me come to him, and even allowed me to take his ear. It was indeed cold. I ruffled his head lightly and pushed him toward the table.

“Go sit all you want. I won’t be back soon.”

“I’ll take a snooze,” said Len.

The Hotel Olympic was a fifteen-story red-and-black structure. Half the plaza in front of it was covered with cars, and in its center stood a monument surrounded by a small flowerbed. It represented a man with a proudly raised head.

Detouring the monument, I suddenly realized that I knew the man. In puzzlement I stopped and examined it more thoroughly.

There was no doubt about it. There in front of Hotel Olympic, in a funny old-fashioned suit with his hand resting on an incomprehensible apparatus which I almost took for the extension of the abstract-styled base, and with his eyes staring at infinity through contemptuously squinting lids, was none other than Vladimir Sergeyevitch Yurkovsky. Carved in gold letters on the base was the legend “Vladimir Yurkovsky, December 5, Year of the Scales.”

I couldn’t believe it, because they do not raise monuments to Yurkovskys. While they live, they are appointed to more or less responsible positions, they are honored at jubilees, they are elected to membership in academies. They are rewarded with medals and are honored with international prizes, and when they die or perish, they are the subjects of books, quotations, references, but always less and less often as time passes, and finally they are forgotten altogether. They depart the halls of memory and linger on only in books. Vladimir Sergeyevitch was a general of the sciences and a remarkable man. But it is not possible to erect monuments to all generals and all remarkable men, especially in countries to which they had no direct relationship and in cities where if they did visit, it was only temporarily. In any case, in that Year of the Scales, which is of significance only to them, he was not even a general. In March he was, jointly with Dauge, completing the investigation of the Amorphous Spot on Uranus. That was when the sounding probe blew up and we all got a dose in the work section — and when we got back to the Planet in September, he was all spotted with lilac blotches, mad at the world, promising himself that he would take time out to swim and get sunburned and then get right back to the design of a new probe because the old one was trash… I looked at the hotel again to reassure myself. The only out was to assume that the life of the town was in some mysterious and potent manner highly dependent on the Amorphous Spot on Uranus. Yurkovsky continued to smile with snobbish superiority. Generally, the sculpture was quite good, but I could not figure out what it was he was leaning on. The apparatus didn’t look like the probe.

Something hissed by my ear. I turned and involuntarily sprang back. Beside me, staring dully at the monument base, was a tall gaunt individual closely encased from head to foot in some sort of gray scaly material and with a bulky cubical helmet around his head. The face was obscured behind a glass plate with holes, from which smoke issued in synchronism with his breathing. The wasted visage behind the plate was covered with perspiration and the cheeks twitched in frantic tempo. At first I took him for a Wanderer, then I thought that he was a tourist executing a curative routine, and only finally did I realize that I was looking at an Arter.

“Excuse me,” I said “Could you please tell me what sort of monument this is?”

The damp face contorted more desperately. “What?” came the dull response from inside the helmet.

I bent down.

“I am inquiring: what is this monument?”

The man glared at the statue. The smoke came thicker out of the holes. There was more powerful hissing.

“Vladimir Yurkovsky,” he read, “Fifth of December, Year of the Scales… aha… December… so — it must be some German.”

“And who put up the monument?”

“I don’t know,” said the man. “But it’s written down right there. What’s it to you?”

“I was an acquaintance of his,” I explained.

“Well then, why do you ask? Ask the man himself.”

“He is dead.”

“Aah… Maybe they buried him here?”

“No,” I said, “he is buried far away.”

“Where?”

“Far away. What’s that thing he is holding?”

“What thing? It’s an eroula.”

“What?”

“I said, an eroula. An electronic roulette.”

My eyes popped.

“What’s a roulette doing here?”

“Where?”

“Here, on the statue.”

“I don’t know,” said the man after some thought. “Maybe your friend invented it?”

“Hardly,” said I. “He worked in a different field.”

“What was that?”

“He was a planetologist and an interplanetary pilot.”

“Aah… well, if he invented it, that was bully for him. It’s a useful thing. I should remember it: Yurkovsky, Vladimir. He must have been a brainy German.”

“I doubt he invented it,” I said. “I repeat — he was an interplanetary pilot.”

The man stared at me.

“Well, if he didn’t invent it, then why is he standing with it?”

“That’s the point,” I said. “I am amazed myself.”

“You are a damn liar,” said the man suddenly. “You lie and you don’t even know why you are lying. It’s early morning, and he is stoned already… Alcoholic!”

He turned away and shuffled off, dragging his thin legs and hissing loudly. I shrugged my shoulders, took a last look at Vladimir Sergeyevitch, and set off toward the hotel, across the huge plaza.

The gigantic doorman swung the door open for me and sounded an energetic welcome.

I stopped.

“Would you be so kind,” said I. “Do you know what that monument is?”

The doorman looked toward the plaza over my head. His face registered confusion.

“Isn’t that written on it?”

“There is a legend,” I said. “But who put it up and why?”

The doorman shuffled his feet.

“I beg your pardon,” he said guiltily, “I just can’t answer your question. The monument has been there a long time, while I came here very recently. I don’t wish to misinform you. Maybe the porter…”

I sighed.

“Well, don’t worry about it. Where is a telephone?”

“To your right, if you please,” he said looking delighted.

A porter started out in my direction, but I shook my head and picked up the receiver and dialed Rimeyer’s number. This time I got a busy signal. I went to the elevator and up to the ninth floor.

Rimeyer, looking untypically fleshy, met me in a dressing gown, out of which stuck legs in pants and with shoes on. The room stank of cigarette smoke and the ashtray was full of butts. There was a general air of chaos in the whole suite. One of the armchairs was knocked over, a woman’s slip was lying crumpled on the couch, and a whole battery of empty bottles glinted under the table.