“Now imagine that in some ancient factory the changeover from mechanical power to electricity took place overnight instead of taking years,” Krivoshein went on. “What would the owner of the factory think when he got there in the morning? Naturally, that someone had swiped the steam engine, the transmission shaft, the belts and pulleys. For him to understand that it was a technological revolution and not a theft he would have to know physics, electronics, and electrodynamics. And you, Matvei Apollonovich, figuratively speaking, are in the position of such an owner.”

“Physics, electronics, electrodynamics.” Onisimov repeated distractedly, looking at his watch. Where was that call to Moscow? “And information theory, and the theory of modeling random processes, too?”

“Aha!” Krivoshein leaned back in his chair and looked at the detective with undisguised pleasure. “You know about those sciences as well?”

“We know everything, Valentin Vasilyevich.”

“I see there's no tricking you.”

“And I don't suggest you try. So, are we going to count on an illegal closing of the case or are we going to tell the truth?”

“Hah.” Krivoshein wiped his forehead and cheeks with a handkerchief. “It's hot in here. All right. Let's agree on this, Matvei Apollonovich. I'll find out what's going on, and then I'll tell you.”

“No,” Onisimov shook his head. “We won't agree on that. It won't do, you know, to have the suspect conduct the investigation of the case. No crime would ever be solved that way.”

“Goddamn it!” Krivoshein began, but the door opened and a young lieutenant announced:

“Moscow, Matvei Apollonovich!”

Onisimov and Krivoshein went up to the second floor to the communications room.

Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili brought his face so close to the videophone screen that it seemed he wanted to peck through the tube with his hawklike, predatory nose. Yes, he recognized his graduate student Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein. Yes, he had seen the student daily for the last few weeks, but he couldn't give them dates of their meetings further back than that by heart. Yes, student Krivoshein had left the university for five days with his personal permission. His growling Georgian r's reverberated in the phone's speaker. He was very upset that he had been dragged away from examinations to take part in this strange proceeding. If the police — here Vano Aleksandrovich fixed his hot blue black eyes on Onisimov — stop believing the very passports that they themselves hand out, then, apparently he will have to change his profession from biologist to verifier of identity for all his graduate students, undergraduates, and relatives, as well as for all the members and corresponding members of the Academy of Sciences whom he has the honor of knowing personally! But in that case, the very natural question of his identity might come up. Wouldn't it be a good idea to have the university rector, or better yet, the president of the academy, come on the videophone to identify this suspicious professor?

Having delivered this lecture in one long breath, Vano Aleksandrovich shook his head in farewell and added, “That's not good! You have to trust people!” and disappeared from the screen. The microphones carried the sound of a slamming door all the way to Dneprovsk. The screen showed a fat man with major's bars on his blue shirt; he made a face.

“What's the matter, comrades? Couldn't get to the bottom of this yourselves? The end!”

The screen went black.

“Vano Aleksandrovich is still mad at me,” thought Krivoshein as he went down the stairs behind the angrily puffing Onisimov. “It's understandable: he feels sorry for me, and I keep my back to him, hide things. If he hadn't accepted me, none of this would have happened. I barely made it in the exams, like a first — year student. I was okay in philosophy and foreign languages, but in my specialty…. But how could a quick reading of textbooks hide the absence of systematic knowledge?”

That had been a year ago. After the entrance exams in biology, Androsiashvili invited him into his office, sat him down in a leather chair, stood by the window and looked at him, his large, balding head tilted to the right. “How old are you?” “Thirty — four.”

“On the edge. Next year you'll celebrate your thirty — fifth birthday among friends and kiss full — time schooling good — bye. Of course, there's correspondence graduate school. And of course, that exists not for learning, but to have a paid vacation. We won't even talk about it. I read your thesis synopsis. It's a good one, mature, with interesting parallels between the work of the nervous centers and electronic circuits. I gave it an 'excellent. But…” the professor picked up a report and glanced at it,”… you did not pass the exams, my boy! I mean, you got a 'satisfactory' but we do not take students with a 'C in their major.”

Krivoshein's expression must have changed drastically, because Vano Aleksandrovich's voice became sympathetic:

“Listen, why do you need this? Moving into graduate study? I've familiarized myself with your background — you work in an interesting institute, with a good position. You're a cyberneticist?”

“A systemology technologist.”

“It's all the same to me. Then why?”

Krivoshein was prepared for that question.

“Precisely because I am a systemologist and a systemology technologist. Man is the most complex and most highly organized system known. I want to figure it out completely — how things are constructed in the human organism, what influences it. To understand the interrelationship of the parts, to put it roughly.”

“To use these principles to create new electronic circuits?” Androsiashvili screwed up his mouth ironically.

“Not only that… and not even so much that. You see… it wasn't always like this. Once man was up against heat and frost; exertion from a hunt or from running away from danger, hunger or rough, unsanitary food like raw meat; heavy mechanical overloads in work; fights which tested the durability of the skull with an oak staff — in a word, once upon a time the physical environment made the same demands on man that… well, that today's military customers make on rockets. (Vano Aleksandrovich harrumphed, but said nothing.) That environment over the millennia formed homo sapiens — the reasoning vertebrate mammal. But in the last two hundred years, if you start from the invention of the steam engine, everything changed. We created an artificial environment out of electric motors, explosives, pharmaceuticals, conveyors, communal service systems, computers, immunization, transport, increased radiation in the atmosphere, paved roads, carbon monoxide, narrow specialization in work — you know, contemporary life. As an engineer, I with others am furthering this artificial environment that determines ninety percent of the life of homo sapiens and soon will determine it one hundred percent. Nature will exist only for Sunday outings. But as a human being, I am somewhat uneasy.” He took a breath and continued.

“This artificial environment frees man of many of the qualities and functions he developed in ancient evolution. Strength, agility, and endurance are now cultivated only in sports, while logical thought, the pride of the Greeks, has been taken over by machines. But man is not developing any new qualities — the environment is changing too fast and biological organisms can't keep up. Technological progress is accompanied by soothing, but poorly substantiated babble that man will always be on top. Nevertheless — if you talk not about man, but about people, the many and the varied — then that is not true even now, and it will only get worse. Many, many do not have the inherent capabilities to be masters of contemporary life: to know a lot, know how to do a lot, learn new things quickly, to work creatively, and structure one's behavior optimally.”