Harry Haritonovich Hilobok couldn't fall asleep that night either. He kept looking at the lighted window across the way in Krivoshein's apartment and tried to guess who was that in there. Lena Kolomiets left rapidly after ten (Harry Haritonvich recognized her figure and walk, and thought: “I should get to know her better. There's a lot to her”), but the light stayed on. Hilobok turned out his lights, and seated himself at the window with a pair of binoculars, but the angle was wrong — he could only see part of the book shelf and the Olympic — ring logo on the wall. “Did she forget to put out the light? Or is there someone else in there? Should I call the police? Ah, the hell with them. Let them figure it out.” Harry Haritonovich yawned deliciously. “Maybe it's the police in there investigating….”

He went back into his room and lit the night — light, a naked woman made out of fake marble with a light bulb inside. The soft light fell on the bearskin rug on the floor, the walls covered with blue wallpaper with golden storks, the polished grain of the desk, the bookshelves, the closet, the television set, the quilted pink couch, the dark red carpet with a scene of ancient feasting — everything was meant to be conducive to sensuousness. Harry Haritonovich undressed and went to look at himself in the mirror. He liked his face: the straight large nose; the smooth, but not fat, cheeks; the dark mustache — there was something of Guy de Maupassant about him. Very recently he had been trying on his doctor — of — technical — sciences look. “Why did he have to do that, that Krivoshein?” Harry Haritonovich felt his heart beating madly. “What had I ever done to him? I even voted for his project and helped his relative get a job at the lab. He doesn't have a dissertation and he envies the rest! Or was it because I didn't fill his request for the SES — 2? Well, it doesn't matter — there is no more Krivoshein. He's gone. That's the way it is. The winner in life is gone. That's the way it is. The winner in life is the one who outlives his adversary.”

Hilobok was pleased with the humor of his thought and wanted to remember it. It should be noted that Harry Haritonovich was not as stupid as one might assume from his behavior. It's just that he based his formula for success on the following: they expect less from a fool. No one ever expected great ideas or knowledge from him; thus on those rare occasions when he would display some knowledge or the tiniest idea, it came as such a pleasant surprise that his colleagues would think: “We underestimate Harry Haritonovich,” and try to compensate for that evaluation in their disposition toward him. And that's how his articles got into the anthology Questions of Systemology — the editors, naturally expecting nothing very good, were bowled over by the few grains of reason in them. Harry Haritonovich turned in work to people who were already demoralized by his talk and behavior. But something went wrong with his dissertation… but, never mind, he would get his!

Harry Haritonovich was lulled by pleasant thoughts and rain — bowlike hopes. He was sleeping soundly and without dreams, the way they must have slept in the Stone Age.

Officer Gayevoy was sleeping and smiling, just returned from his night shift.

After a good cry about Krivoshein and herself, Lena fell asleep.

But not everyone was asleep. The police guard Golovorezov was fighting off sleepiness at his post watching the New Systems Lab; he was sitting on the steps of the lodge, smoking, and looking at the stars over the trees. Something rustled in the grass not far away. He shined his flashlight: a red — eyed albino rabbit looked at him from the bushes. The guard shooed him away. Golovorezov had no idea just what kind of a rabbit it was.

Victor Kravets tossed and turned on the hard cot under a cloth blanket that smelled of disinfectant in the solitary confinement cell of the prison. He was in that state of nervous agitation when sleep is impossible.

“What will happen now? What will happen? Did graduate student Krivoshein get out of it, or will the laboratory and the project perish? What else can I do to help? Fight back? Confess? To what? Citizen investigator, I'm guilty of good intentions — good intentions that didn't help anything. I guess that's a heavy guilt, if that's how it's worked out. We kept rushing — hurry! hurry! — to master the discovery, to reach that method 'with absolute dependability. And even though I didn't admit it to myself, I expected us to come up with it too. Evolution brought new information into man gradually, by the method of small trials and small errors, testing its benefit with innumerable experiments. And we — we tried to do it all in one experiment!

“We should have dropped the idea of possible social repercussions right off the bat and worked openly and calmly like everyone else. In the long run, people aren't children. They must understand what's what on their own. We figured out everything: that man is a super complex, protein quantal — molecular system, that he is the product of natural evolution, that he is information recorded in the liquid. The one thing we missed was that man is man. A free creature. The master of his fate and his actions. And that freedom began long before all the rebellions and revolutions, on that distant day when a humanlike ape thought: 'I can climb up the tree to get the fruit but I can also knock it down with the stick in my hand. Which is better? It wasn't just thinking, that ape — it had seen storms make branches knock down fruit. Freedom was the opportunity to choose a variant of behavior based on knowledge. From that day every discovery, every invention has given people new opportunities, made them even freer.

“Of course, there have been discoveries (not many) that told people: don't! You can't build perpetual motion machines; you can't pass the speed of light; you can't accurately measure the speed and position of an electron simultaneously. But our discovery forbids nothing and doesn't change anything. It says: go ahead!

“Freedom. It's not easy to recognize your freedom in our modern society, and pick variations of your behavior wisely and well. Millions of years of the past hang over man when biological laws determined the behavior of his ancestors and everything was simple. And now he is still trying to lay the blame for his mistakes on circumstances, on cruel fate, and to place hopes in God, on a strong personality, on luck — just so it's not him. And when the hopes shatter, man looks and finds a scapegoat: the people who had raised the hopes are free of guilt. In essence, people who take the path of least resistance do not know freedom.”

The peephole in the door opened, letting in a ray of light; it was blocked by the guard's face. They were probably checking to see if he was planning another break. Victor Kravets laughed silently: naturally the clink was the best place to meditate on freedom! He acknowledged with pleasure that despite all the recent hassles he hadn't lost his sense of humor.

Double Adam — Hercules was sitting and reminiscing on a bench at the bus stop on an empty street. Yesterday, as he was coming from the railroad station, thinking about the three currents of information (science, life, art) that affect man, he had the beginnings of a vague, but very important idea. He was interrupted by the three men with the demand to show his papers, those so and so's…. He was left with the feeling that he had been close to a valuable guess. He would have been better off without it, that feeling. Now he wouldn't get any sleep!

“Let's try it again. I was thinking about what information can be used, and how, to ennoble man? Krivoshein had the idea of synthesizing a knight 'without fear or flaw. And now I've got it and I can't reject it. I ruled out information from the environment and from science, because their influence on man can be equally good or bad. There is only the method of awakening good thoughts with a lyre — art.