“I would be good in golubenky, devil take it” – I thought.
– Black, gray, as a last resort olive.
– Well. I will cause a suit. For now undress and swim for a while in the pool. Throw linen into this hatch in a floor.
Li left.
I undressed and began to go down on white steps to water. But hardly fingers of my leg touched water, I screamed from surprise, having felt pricks thousands of needles.
– Forgive – I heard Li’s voice about myself though it was not in the room – I forgot to warn you – water of an elektrizovan. We cannot do without it, electricity is a massage for our nerves. I will reduce current now.
Li entered, turned the lever, undressed and plunged into the water.
Having swum for a while and having dived, we left. Bathing in electric water miraculously refreshed me.
– Now one more electrization – Li told. – Sit down on this chair.
I obediently took seat on the chair standing on the black ebonite platform. And suddenly since the ends of rods of “umbrella” streams of pale lilac light zastruitsya.
– Electric shower. Well?
– Yes… yes… about – it is very good – I told, feeling as the criminal sentenced to death on an electric chair. However everything was safely.
– Now here here – Li continued to dispose of me – pass to this case. This is, so to speak, the automatic doctor-controller. Give your hand. So. It here.
Li applied to my pulse and heart of a plate, attached to cords, and turned off light. On the screen there was a shining curve, it noted blows of my heart.
– Yes, heart at you is a little not as it should be – Li told. – Let’s look at a stomach, lungs.
On the screen the image of my internals appeared.
– Lungs as it should be. But the stomach is strongly reduced. Obviously, on one chemical food pills it is difficult for you to exist – the organism did not get used yet. I will order to you something like porridge and mousse. At us also not still passed to pills. There are fans of more “essential” food though all these dishes very easy and semi-fluid.
Li lit fire.
I sighed, having remembered a good piece of meat. But it was not necessary and to dream of it. They for the sake of me will not kill the last cow of a zoo?
– Well, at you everything is relative as it should be. And I will accept electromassage.
Li, улегшись on a long bench, pressed the button, and suddenly from under a bench some hands cores terminating in spheres, handles, rakes got out. All these “hands” attacked on Li’s body and began to rumple it, to rub, poshlepyvat, drum, iron.
From outside it seemed, perhaps fell into clutches some terrible arachnoid insect. Well, perhaps saved me though from this pleasure. I, probably, would shout for fear, broke joints of these metal paws and fell down from a bench.
But Li felt excellently, turned over with a side sideways and repeated:
– Well, perfectly!
At last this execution came to an end. Li quickly rose and put on in a pure blue tunic.
– And here to you – he told, giving me the same tunic from silvery fabric.
I put on. And when looked in the big mirror fixed into a wall did not recognize himself. At me not only head, but also eyebrow hair disappeared. The suit gave me the strangest look. “To seem on Kuznetsk in such look” – I thought.
– Now five minutes of rest. You lay down on this wicker chair.
We laid down. Light went out again. Suddenly the wall against us as if fell, opening a view of the seashore. The moon lit breaks of waves. Palm trees quietly shook. I admired a show.
– I love this corner of the Mediterranean Sea – Li told. – And often I cause it. Transfer on radio – he added. – Let’s have a rest, and I will acquaint you with my wife.
– You are married?
– Yes, we go.
The screen went out. Light lit up again. We left a bathroom.
Having opened an adjacent door, Li told:
– Ying, here the person from the past with which you wanted to get acquainted.
I entered the room which I took for a lobby, and saw Li’s wife. It stood at an opposite wall. Having hospitably smiled to me, she made welcome gesture a hand.
I went to the young beautiful woman, on a habit giving a hand. But she did not raise the hand, and I remembered that at these new people of handshake are not accepted. I took still a step and hit the head against an invisible barrier. The woman burst out laughing, but immediately constrained the laughter and addressed the husband:
– Li, you unless did not warn our guest?
– I believed that he already got used to our screens – Li told.
Again screen! I was sure that I see the living woman, but not her image.
– I will leave you so far – Ying told – in ten minutes we will have supper.
The screen went out. When the room was lit with usual light, I inspected it and once again was surprised. The room was three times less bathroom and is absolutely deprived of furniture. Naked walls without uniform ledge, ornament. Really it is the only living room?
Li smiled, having noticed my surprise.
– Your dwelling is very modest – I told.
– But it is convenient and hygienic.
Li pressed a leg one checker of a parquet floor, and suddenly from a floor the round table on a round column and two chairs rose.
– You sit down – Li told.
We took seat.
– Ask – with a smile offered Li.
Really, I had to ask endlessly.
– Ale spoke to me – I began – that you have no government, there are no employees, there are no officials. But how you conduct the economy? Here you caused to me a suit. Means, someone has to keep account.
– The account at us is put is exemplary. All this becomes very simply, mechanically now. I cause the necessary thing. Mechanically she moves from a warehouse and is sent on a pneumatic pipe here. At the same time the counter celebrates a holiday of this thing. The same automatic counter sums up the results. And by the end of the year we know what need at us for Tom’ or other subject what annual gain, how many it is necessary to prepare for the future. We have no changing fashion, and some stocks pass from year to year. So in all consumer goods, up to flying cars.
– But there has to be some control? Unless you have no abuses at all?
Li in perplexity raised eyebrows.
– What abuses can be? I will call to myself the excess air boat? Why it to me? Unless I can depart on two at once? I can also sell it to nobody, first, because we have no money, and secondly because everyone can take that it is necessary for it. For the same reason there is no sense to steal or appropriate. We have no crimes of this sort at all. And not that we became more moral, and just crimes lost any purpose. We have everything that it is necessary to us. Here you told that the dwelling is very modest. But what is necessary for healthy life? Light. You see fine lighting for night.
– Electricity?
– No, bacteria.
– Bacteria?!
– Yes, the shining bacteria. And this floor-to-ceiling window for the sun. We have an ideal ventilation and heating in which, however, there is no special need as we made winter-proof all climate of our latitudes. What else?
– But cultural requirements: music, books, pictures?
– You still will get acquainted with our art, our cultural requirements.
– One more question: where there is your wife?
– On Southern Altai. Doctors prescribed it mountain air.
– Long ago?
– Two years. But for us there are no distances. We often visit each other, we meet and we speak also frequently as though we lived in one room. There are spouses and who are very loving who constantly live at distance thousands of kilometers and find it convenient. In general you should understand one thing: never before – at least at us in Europe, Asia and Africa – the mankind did not live such close-knit, solid family in spite of the fact that certain members of this multimillion family physically are more scattered, than earlier. We are in constant communication. I have friends everywhere – from a pole to a pole, and I conduct with them continuous conversations. We often have meetings, “congresses” where we discuss our public affairs. But we do all this if we want, without leaving the room.
Light went out, the screen was lit.
– Well, here and I – told Ying.
It seemed to me that it approached our table and took seat in a chair near the husband.
– Children will be today? – Li asked.
– To told me what he guards in Arabia, by all means wants to find the first for the spy, and Tsal…
– Here and I!. – and one more “ghost” – the young man very similar to Li approached a table.
“It has such big children!” – I thought.
– Today we will feast – Li told, having acquainted me with the son. – It is necessary to show to this antediluvian person, as we are a good judge of a good dish and pleasant drink.
Chapter 7
“I SEE EVERYTHING, I HEAR EVERYTHING, I KNOW EVERYTHING”
Li pressed the button at the table edge, and suddenly on a table there were two devices and extraordinary narrow as chemical flasks, high shot glasses.
At the same moment on a table of the wife of the engineer, Ying, dishes also appeared – she caused them.
Li lifted a shot glass and suggested me to look at liquid on light. The shot glass seemed a range. Liquid was poured by layers, and each layer, without mixing up with others, had the coloring.
– Drink slowly, small drinks. In this liquid there is no alcohol at all, but there is something another, harmless and… you learn.
I on the advice of Li began to drink very slowly. I cannot give my feeling. It was some flavoring symphony. Taste changed all the time, and each drink brought me inexplicable pleasure. I felt extraordinary clarity of thoughts and some special cheerfulness.
– It is not artificial raising of nerves, but clarification of a brain from toxins – poisoning products – Li told.
– Never before I felt such flavoring pleasure – I told.
– You still will strengthen it this dish – and Li moved up to me mousse.
– Tasty? – asked, smiling, Ying.
– Amazingly – I answered.
The son Li with pleasure savoured the same mousse on the table, on the screen.
– You still study? – I asked the young man.
– Why “still”? – he answered with a question.
– Because you are young. You study at some school or university, here that I wanted to tell.
– At school? At university? – again bewildered the young man asked.
“Really Li has such silly son?.” – I thought. But I had to be convinced soon that I hurried with the conclusion.
– He does not understand your thought therefore – stood up for the son Li, as if guessed my thought – that we have no school age and we have no schools.
Seeing my amazed person, Li explained to me:
– Still your time put to itself a task to bring closer school to life. On this principle you built the labor school. We managed to carry out this principle, as they say, for all hundred percent. The school and life merged at us together, or if you want, life and practice became our only school.
– But theory?
It is studied also, but this studying does not come off life and practice.
Having drunk from the long shot glass, Li continued:
– It is necessary to tell you that the control of our cars is so simple that even teenagers cope with them and do it very willingly. Even standing at “machine”, they can listen to lectures on radio.
– Again radio!
– Yes, radio destroyed that school what was in your time when it, to a greater or lesser extent, tore off from life. Radio teaches us from a cradle to a crematorium. We study always and everywhere. We fill up the knowledge at work if it does not require special attention, and on walk, even during the air travel. We listen to lectures of the most great scientists, we are present at experiences, we watch the formulas appearing on the screen. Only where the first-hand experience is necessary, we resort to things – flasks, machines, drills. But they always to our services – and in factory laboratories, and partly and at home. For chemical experiments we, for example, can always cause on the house everything to us necessary.
– You are probably surprised even more – Ying told – if you learn that we almost do not read books.
– Yes, it is right – confirmed to Li. – We use sound transfer more.
– But how to allocate from a broadcast that it is necessary for you? At you hundreds of radio stations at the same time have to work?
– Each radio station operates on the wave, and length of these waves differs not only with meters, but also centimeters and even millimeters now. And we absolutely easily allocate the necessary station even if its wavelength differs from a wave of other station in only several millimeters.
– And then – Tsal efficiently declared – these stations are not much as you assume. Our network of radio stations is built on system of zone time, or, otherwise to tell, on longitude degrees – one station by fifteen degrees as time differs for an hour, considering for your time, through each fifteen degrees. Therefore from the west bank of Africa to east coast of Asia we have only ten main radio sets which fill with radio waves everyone the fifteen degrees of longitude from a pole to a pole. There are, however, still central radio stations, their radius of action covers all our territory. But we use them only for communication with ten zone.
– You did not tell about radio stations for transmission of energy yet – Li added – but I still will acquaint you with them. Yes, radio made huge changes to all public life, changes about which you probably did not dare and to dream. Radio abolished need of a physical assemblage of people. It was great hygienic achievement, and at the same time radio pulled together people in public sense. Radio destroyed not only old school, but also old theater, cinema. We have no stuffy, overflowed with public cinemas, theatrical and concert halls, audiences.
– Why don’t we acquaint our guest with theater now? – Ying offered.
– Perfectly – Li agreed – for this purpose we do not need to run behind tickets and to trudge by your awful trams.
The second white wall of the room suddenly, as if by magic, turned into the stage if only what I saw, it is possible to call a scene. I not only never saw such art wealth, such situation, such scenic and lighting effects, but also did not assume that they are possible. Melodious music accompanied acting. It was the new kind of art. The speech turned into singing, and then it seemed that there is an opera. Gestures and the movements were natural, but are so merged with a musical background that it would be possible to call it some new ballet. Light changed the coloring together with a melody and seemed the shining sounds. It was some synthetic art.
I sat as fascinated and was upset when the screen went out.
– Here we also visited theater – Li told. – Our theaters have no auditorium at all. They have only a huge scene and a bigger room for scenery and cars. We have only ten theaters.
– On zone time?
– Yes, too on zone. Only ten troupes, but all of them consist of the first-class actors and artists. As you can see, art also became property of everything as science… Really? I listen. Eight – D, seven – C? Quite right! – Having turned back to me, Li told: – My friend Vadi, the inveterate chess player, told me that he resolved a task which I set to it.
– And where it now? – I asked.
– Everything traps the American spy, flying over the Red Sea. Yes, chess – Li continued – a never-dying game. But also it does not satisfy us any more. We exhausted almost all possible combinations. Everyone new is an event. We have new entertainments, new sports and arts which, unfortunately, are inaccessible to you. We, for example, feel the real esthetic pleasure, watching the course of solution of problems of the higher mathematics. Our mathematical geniuses carry away us the creativity nearly more than you were carried away your “divine” the tenor. In this modest room we can have everything that gives art, knowledge, life. Each of us can tell: “I see everything, I hear everything, I know everything”. At least, I can know everything from a treasury of science and to see everything that is created in the world…