Ghenady Prashkevich
	VIRTUAL HERO OR THE LAW OF UNIVERSAL GRAVITY
	CHAPTER SEVEN
	... His wife made coffee. After the first sip, as always the
most tasty one, Nikolai Vladimirovich said:
	"Please, find my black tie. Our Academic Council is meeting
today."
	"A meeting? In connection with Melnichuk?" His wife always
knew the tiniest details of his affairs. "So it is true he has
invented something peculiar?"
	"Not invented." Whimpered Nikolai Vladimirovich.
"Discovered. This is what he thinks - discovered. And if Hozin
and Dovgailo support Melnichuk I'll slap their face for sure."
	"Correct." His wife said. "Truth, even scientific truth
should be defended. Only don't get carried away, dear. You are,
after all, a doctor of science. One, well, two slaps should do
completely. And what is it he has discovered?"
	"For a start he has discovered the law of gravitation."
	"And what about Newton?" His wife exclaimed. "Gravitation is
written about in all textbooks."
	"Textbooks do not worry Melnichuk."
	"Well, how about this then?" His wife dropped the cup and
pieces from it scattered all over the floor. "How come it falls?"
	"The power of universal pressure! Is it clear? That is what
professor Melnichuk declares."
	"Well, personally I don't care." His wife smiled
consolingly. "No matter what you call it the cup breaks anyway.
And what is it Melnichuk wants in return for this?"
	"Almost nothing, only that he replace Newton's name in the
textbooks with his own."
	"Are you jealous, dear?"
	Nikolai Vladimirovich choked:
	"Don't lead me away from the subject. If anyone at the
Academic Council defends this slanderer of the classics I'll slap
his face. Melnichuk, Hozin, Dovgailo.... As if you don't know
what demagogues they are!"
	"All right, all right, here is your tie." His wife said
softly. "Take a walk. It'll be longer along the linden alley, but
you have time. And don't walk down the boulevard with the poplars
or your nose will turn red. And you can't start telling 
everybody that you are allergic."
	Nikolai Vladimirovich had already thought of taking a walk
by himself. It wouldn't be bad to drop in at Mishin's. Big and
mustached, a calculator dangling on his chest, Mishin would lead
him to his machine. "Another day," he would say, lovingly
caressing the rusty panel,"and we'll hear the voice of the
skies." This was his aim: to hear what was going on up there in
the skies.
	A row of houses were to be seen behind the linden alley. The
upper floors seemed indistinct. As did the clouds floating above
his head. This incompleteness always excited Nikolai
Vladimirovich. He looked right - yesterday a nice girl had waved
to him from the balcony. But today an impertinent boy was jumping
there, he showed his tongue to Nikolai Vladimirovich. At the
corner where yesterday a familiar mechanic from the Experimental
workshops had been working on his motorbike, a saddled horse
stood. Who had brought it here?
	Nikolai Vladimirovich enjoyed the quiet of the early
morning. He loved his campus - an artificial village built next
to an artificial sea. If only there weren't these sudden changes
- either a monument would suddenly disappear and a lake would
appear in its place, or instead of the young lab-assistant an old
smoking shrew would sit behind the microscope ...
	But - these changes!
	"Either I am going out of my mind." He complained to Mishin.
"Or something is happening to our world."
	"Go for the second." Mishin advised, showing a mighty grin.
He loved Nikolai Vladimirovich. "If Melnichuk and company don't
throw me out of the institute, I'll clear up something in the
picture of the world."
	Mishin planned to sound the invisible sections of the sky,
those sections where there was not a single star. "There could be
some breakthroughs in parallel worlds." He insisted. "We might be
just one of those virtual worlds. You for example think that
Melnichuk is bad, but in fact it is the world which is bad, in so
far that we cannot influence it." Mishin's words brought no
consolation to Nikolai Vladimirovich. In a way he liked them even
less than Melnichuk's impudence.
	
	CHAPTER SEVEN
	... His wife didn't bother making the coffee.
	"Make it yourself, dawdler!" She was already dressed and
could not sit with him. This infuriated her. "I've been blowing
the horn in the personnel department for 10 years, but I am
already chief of this department and you are just some doctor of
philosophy. Why couldn't you support professor Melnichuk? You
have read his book, everybody has read it, even I have."Phenomena
Disclaiming Gravitation". Such a man will go far, he is daring,
Dovgailo and Hozin aren't his supporters for nothing. Why do you
have to be against them?
	"And why should I be with them?"
	"Well yes!" His wife grinned sarcastically. "You want to go
along with Newton. And what do you care about Newton? He was an
Englishman and a peer, while Melnichuk - he is one of us."
	Nikolai Vladimirovich did not very much want Melnichuk to
rise to be a peer. Then it would immediately become evident who
had supported whom in the exhausting struggle and who had
expressed unpardonable principality.
	He was walking along the familiar street. The fluff of the
poplars swam in the air and only this spoiled the harmony of the
world. It would be a be a nice finishing touch to appear at the
meeting with a red nose. Melnichuk, and Hozin, and Dovgailo -
they all knew that he was allergic but should the commission show
interest in the color of his nose it was hard to guess what they
would say.
	A row of wooden houses could be seen on the left. An old
lady was tying a washing line between the post. A boy from the
roof of a barn was showing Nikolai Vladimirovich his tongue. Oh
no, Nikolai Vladimirovich thought, I'd rather the little girl
laughed on the balcony. I'll drop in at Mishin's, he decided.
Mishin enters his observations in a special notebook.
	"Yesterday, you say, you walked along a row of nine-storey
houses and a girl on a balcony laughed? Good... And what about
the day before? Also a house, only this time a brick house, with
three storeys and with an old lady at the window? Good... And
today, you say, wooden houses? This too is very good! Only don't
get frightened, we all live and nobody gets frightened. You are
not going out of your mind, you are just confirming my theory.
When our machine is put into operation..." He generously invited
his friend into a co-authorship." The world will reveal its
insides to us. As for Melnichuk, you can spit on him. He or
Newton, what's the difference. Yes, so what, what's the
difference?" Nikolai Vladimirovich thought out loud.
	
	CHAPTER SEVEN
	... His wife made coffee.
	"Let us never quarrel again." She proposed. "Try it, it's
delicious. This is real coffee, Dovgailo's wife brought it from
Nigeria, they have been on a business trip together again. It is
only you who cannot get away from your damned instruments. The
others, by the way, have a high opinion of you. They all think
much of you. Melnichuk, Hozin and Dovgailo too. They say that you
are not a bad physicist, only you stick too much to the classical
heritage. Why do you need this Newton? Melnichuk is backed by the
majority. Melnichuk is daring. Look here." She said forcefully.
"I drop a cup and it smashes. Maybe it is the earth's gravity and
maybe a certain force exercises pressure upon it. The noises you
and your Mishin make is all in vain. Go and repent, Kolka. Say
you are sorry at the meeting."
	Nikolai Vladimirovich noted nervously:
	"Not everything daring is also truthful."
	"The management knows better." His wife said strictly. "This
is not my first year as a secretary to Melnichuk. He thinks
highly of you, only he says you are under the evil influence of
Mishin, who has decided to eavesdrop on something."
	"This is nonsense, pussycat." Nikolai Vladimirovich smiled
forcedly. "Where is my leather coat? The meeting of the Academic
Council is in an hour and here I am, chattering all sorts of
rubbish with you. And remember, pussycat." He said gravely. "I
have been and I remain on the side of Newton."
	"Newton had a house of his own." His wife sobbed. "I have
seen pictures. He had a house and a garden too and there were
apple-trees in the garden."
	"We are also going to have all that."
	"Only don't you go to Mishin! He rings up and asks - how are
things. I say: the same as yesterday. And he croaks: It can't be.
Why is he talking like that?"
	Nikolai Vladimirovich went out into the street. He loved his
compound. The commercial street, the kindergarten, the new
nine-storeyed house on the left, pine-trees, several lindens. If
he hurried up he could manage to drop in at Mishin's.
	Nikolai Vladimirovich crossed the small square, showed his
tongue to an old woman, standing frozen at a window, nodded to a
familiar driver rummaging in his "Zhiguli". Cars were speeding
along, blurred like in a film, undefined clouds were floating
above. A normal, living world. In such a world it makes sense to
struggle for the stability of the laws of nature.
	Nikolai Vladimirovich made his way to the mighty double gate
with a cunning peephole through which the narrow corridors of the
basement could be seen.
	"What's your business here?" he asked the workers who
crowded at the gate.
	"We were sent by Melnichuk to take out the machine. It is
not in our line of business, this machine, and it devours energy
like hell!"
	Nikolai Vladimirovich knocked at the door.
	"I won't open." Mishin responded peevishly. "You have been
told, come after lunch, I shall take it all out myself."
	"It's me." Nikolai Vladimirovich said. The door opened a
little and immediately shut behind him.
	Mishin was rubbing his hands. The devilish construction
reached up to the very ceiling.
	"Maybe we could take all this out." Nikolai Vladimirovich 
was sorry for Mishin. "I could help. Melnichuk will be informed,
so he will give me the laboratory and if I possess a laboratory I
shall take you with me."
	There was a strong knock at door.
	"Oh, they are switching the current off." Mishin said moving
quickly, he went to the latticed panel and drew a certain lever
towards himself. Strange sounds forced their way out from two
columns placed at the corners and filled the laboratory.
Interesting, where did he point his antenna, to which invisible
part of the sky?
	"Listen!" Mishin seized his shoulders.
	And they heard them. The voices were so distant, as if they
came from the incredibly remote areas of the Universe.
	"Not bad ...." they heard. "Not bad at all."
	
.............................................................
	"Not bad ... Not bad at all..." The editor said. "Chapter
Seven at last begins to take shape. The hero becomes alive. If he
could have some more resolution!"
	"He was more resolute in the first version," the author
remarked timidly.
	"He was pugnacious in the first version," the editor
objected. "By the way, why such a cumbersome name? Let us take
something shorter. Say Ilya. Or Peter ... Peter Ilich! Agreed?
And something else - what a strange idea to eavesdrop on the sky?
Not that I'm arguing, the times require from us to put some
point-blank questions, but there is some limit, isn't there? To
eavesdrop on the sky ... We can get carried a bit too far like
this." He patted the author on the shoulder.
	"Do some more work on the chapter. Some things from the
first version, some things from the rest. Synthesis: that is what
upholds art."
	
	CHAPTER SEVEN
	... His wife made coffee.
	"I want tea." Peter Ilich said. "The Academic Council
meeting is in an hour and coffee makes me nervous. I don't need
to be in a hurry. Maybe in the deliberations of professor
Melnichuk there really is something. I need to get accustomed, to
listen to the opinion of various people. Newton won't get lost
anyway.
	"I'll make the tea at once." His wife said softly." And you
ask for a laboratory at the council. If you do say that there is
something in the deliberations of Melnichuk why don't you support
him? Dovgailo's wife told me that Melnichuk doesn't like
opponents at all."
	"I shall be silent, dear." Peter Ilich promised solemnly. "I
shall be as dumb as a fish! Melnichuk or Newton... You are right.
Now the main thing is to get a lab."
	"We have two hours to spare." His wife dropped her eyes.
	"I shall take a walk." Peter Ilich was a man of character.
"I shall drop in at Mishin's. He is a bit out of his mind with
this machine of his. To eavesdrop on the sky... He gets carried a
bit too far sometimes!"