Self-discovery

Then appeared candidate of sciences V. Ivanov, who had specially made the trip from Leningrad (not without a phone call from me). He clarified the borrowed data and took apart the “original” part of the dissertation; Valery's speech was full of erudition and subtle humor. The audience grew noisier — and then it began!

My old friend Zhalbek Balbekovich Pshembakov tried to find out from Harry how was it that in circuit number two… it's not worth writing about either. Hilobok didn't know how it was, but he tried to get away with some bull and babble. Then the other colleagues of the construction bureau entered the fray. The last speaker was the chief engineer, a professor and Nobel Prize winner (I won't mention his name in this context). “I had the feeling from the first that there was something wrong here,” he began.

So the first form didn't help Hilobok; they squashed his dissertation like God can squash a turtle! Harry was a pitiful sight. Everyone was going off to his office and he was taking down his magnificent displays, and the stiff oaktag rolled up and hit him in the mustache. I went over to help.

“No, thank you,” Hilobok muttered. “Are you satisfied? You don't write anything and you don't let anyone else do it, either. It's an easy life. Valentin Vasilyevich, nature has endowed you with certain gifts….”

“Sure, it's easy! My salary is half of yours, and my vacation time, too. And I'm swamped with work and responsibilities.”

“You add to your worries unnecessarily. Why did you have to get involved in this?” Harry, rolling up his displays, gave me a threatening and angry look. “You have to think about the institute, not just about yourself and me. Well, this isn't the place to talk about it.”

So that's the ticket. Well, it doesn't matter. I feel wonderful now. As though I had done something that was infinitely more valuable and meaningful than even our discovery: I squashed a viper. That means it's possible. And not as terrible as I had expected.

Now I'm not so worried about our work's future. Problems like this can be surmounted, too.

“But it did have an effect on his work,” muttered Onisimov — Krivoshein, watching the computer — womb. “Everything has an effect on the work.”

May 29. Today I was called onto Azarov's thick carpet. He has just gotten back from a trip.

“So you realize what you've done?”

“But, Arkady Arkadievich, the dissertation — “

“We're not talking about Harry Haritonovich's dissertation, but about your behavior! You've undermined the institute's prestige, and in no small way!”

“I expressed my opinion.”

“Yes, but where? How? Is it so difficult to comprehend that in another organization you are not simply an engineer trying to even a scholarly score with someone (well, Harry told his side!) but a representative of the Institute of Systemology! Why didn't you express your opinion at the preliminary defense?”

“I didn't know about it.”

“Nevertheless you could have told it to my replacement after the defense. It would have been taken into account!”

(He's talking about Voltampernov — a likely story!)

“It wouldn't have been taken into account.”

“I see we won't reach an agreement. What are your plans for the future?”

“I don't intend to resign.”

“I'm not asking you to. But it seems to me that you're not ready to head a laboratory. A scientist working in a collective must bear the good of the collective in mind and at any rate, certainly not deal it any death blows by his behavior. I imagine that you will have trouble, at the next qualifying session, passing to lab head. That's all. I won't keep you.”

So that's how it is. The whole institute is abuzz with turkey gobbles: “An engineer against a candidate! Keeping him from his doctorate!” Thanks to Harry everybody thinks that I was trying to settle a score with him. They're dragging out my old sins: the chewing out, the accident in Ivanov's lab (Matyushin, the head janitor, is planning to sue me for damages). They realized that I haven't turned in an annual report on my project, even though topic 154 isn't over until this year. They say that a commission to check on the lab's work should be set up.

My enemies shout. My friends whisper carefully, looking over their shoulders: “You really gave it to Hilobok. The jerk deserves it. Well, they'll get you now.” And they suggest where I should tranfer. “Why don't you intercede?” “Well, you see….” Even good old Fenya Zagrebnyak just spreads his hands apart. “What can I do? It's not in my field.”