Roadside Picnic

"Because I don't understand it myself. I have systems of equations, but no way to interpret them. Witches' jelly, is that colloidal gas?"

"The very same. Did you hear about the catastrophe at the Currigan labs?"

"I heard something about it."

"Those idiots put a porcelain container with the jelly into a special room, highly insulated and isolated. That is, they thought it was isolated. And when they opened the container with manipulators the jelly went through metal and plastic, like water through a sieve, and outside. And everything it touched also turned into jelly. Thirty-five people were killed, more than a hundred were crippled, and the entire building was destroyed. Did you ever go there? Marvelously equipped place! And now the jelly has seeped down into the basement and the lower floors. Some prelude to contact."

Valentine made a face.

"Yes, I know all that. But you must agree, Richard, that the visitors had nothing to do with it. How could they have known about the existence of our military-industrial complexes?"

"They should have known,” Noonan insisted.

"Their answer to that would be that the military-industrial complexes should have been done away with a long time ago."

"That's for sure. That's what they should have taken care of, if they're so powerful."

"You mean you're suggesting interference in the internal affairs of the human race?"

"Hmmm,” Noonan said. “I guess we're going too far. Let's drop it. Instead, let's go back to the beginning of our discussion. How will it all end? Well, look at you, for instance, you're a scientist. Are you hoping for something fundamental to come out of the Zone, something that will alter science, technology, our way of life?"

Valentine shrugged.

"You're barking up the wrong tree, Richard. I don't like to indulge in empty fantasizing. When the subject is something serious, I prefer to revert to healthy careful skepticism. Based on what we've already received, a whole range of possibilities is raised, and I can say nothing specific about it."

"All right, let's try another approach. What do you think you've already received?"

"You'll find this amusing—very little. We've unearthed many miracles. In a few cases, we've even learned how to use these miracles for our own needs. A monkey pushes a red button and gets a banana, pushes a white button and gets an orange, but it doesn't know how to get bananas and oranges without the buttons. And it doesn't understand what relationship the buttons have to the fruit. Take the so-so's, for example. We've learned how to use them. We've even learned the circumstances under which they multiply through a process similar to cell division. But we still haven't been able to make a single so-so. We don't know how they work, and judging by present evidence, it will be a long time before we will.

"I would put it this way. There are objects for which we have found uses. We use them, but almost certainly not the way the visitors use them. I am positive that in the vast majority of cases we are hammering nails with microscopes. But at least we're using some things—the so-so's, and the bracelets to stimulate life processes. And the various types of quasibiological masses, which have created a revolution in medicine. We have received new tranquilizers, new types of mineral fertilizers, a revolution in agriculture. But why am I giving you a list! You know this at least as well as I—I notice you wear a bracelet. Let's call this group of objects beneficial. It can be said that mankind has benefited from them in some degree, even though it should never be forgotten that in our Euclidian world every stick has two ends."

"Undesirable applications?"

"Precisely. Say the use of so-so's in the defense industry. But that's not what I'm talking about. The action of every beneficial object has been more or less studied and more or less explained. Our technology is holding us up. In fifty years or so we'll know how to make them ourselves and then we can crack nuts to our hearts' content. It's more complicated with the other group of objects—more complicated because we have found no application for them, and their qualities within the framework of our present concepts are definitely not understandable. For instance, the magnetic traps. We know that they're magnetic traps, Panov has proven it very wittily. But we don't know the source of such a powerful magnetic field and what causes their superstability. We don't understand a thing about them. We can only weave fantastic theories about properties of space that we never suspected before. Or the K-23. What do you call it? The pretty black beads that are used for jewelry?"

"Black sprays."