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VII. RETURN

Johnson in impatience left a cabin.

Air was warm. Having thrown off a fur coat, Johnson ran to a lodge. Крукс hardly kept up with it.

There was a fine autumn evening. The setting sun brightly lit large red apples on garden apple-trees.

– However – with surprise Johnson said – really I overslept till fall?

He ran up to a fencing of a garden and saw the son and the wife. Little Samuel sat among autumn flowers and with laughter threw mother’s apples. Frederica’s face was not visible behind apple-tree branches.

– Samuel! Frederica! – joyfully Johnson cried and, having jumped through a low fencing, ran through beds towards to the wife and the son.

But the kid instead of rushing towards to the father, began to cry, having taken away the approaching Johnson, and in a fright rushed to mother.

Johnson stopped and suddenly uvidat the mistake: it were not Samuel and Frederica though the boy very much resembled his son. Young mother left because of a tree. It was one years with Frederica, same light and ruddy. But hair were more dark. Of course, it is not Frederica! And as soon as he could be mistaken! Possibly, it is one of neighbors or Frederica’s girlfriends.

Johnson slowly approached and bowed. The young woman expectantly looked at it.

– Forgive, I, apparently, frightened your son – he told, getting accustomed to the child and being surprised to similarity with Itself – ale. – Frederica of the house?

– What Frederica? – the woman asked.

– Frederica Johnson, my wife!

– Whether you were mistaken the address? – the woman answered. – Frederica is not here…

– Pretty business! That I was mistaken in the address of own house!

– Your house?.

– And whose? – This confused woman began to irritate Johnson.

On a threshold of a lodge the young man of years of thirty three attracted obviously, seemed noise of voices.

– In what business, Elaine? – he asked, without descending from a step of a porch and popykhivy a short tube.

– Business is in that – Johnson answered that during my absence here, obviously, there were some changes the question turned not to it – … Others lodged in my house…

– In your house? – derisively the young man standing on a porch asked.

– Yes, in my house! – Johnson answered, having waved a hand on the cottage.

– With whom I have honor to speak? – the young man asked.

– I am Bendzhemin Johnson!

– Bendzhemin Johnson? – the young man asked again and burst out laughing. You hear, Elaine? – he addressed the woman. – One more Bendzhemin Johnson and owner of this cottage!

– Allow to assure you – suitable Kruks suddenly put in a ward – that before you really Bendzhemin Johnson. – And he pointed to Johnson by a hand.

– It becomes entertaining. And with itself dragged the witness! Allow also you to tell that your joke is unsuccessful. Thirty three years I was Bendzhemin Johnson who was born in this house and its owner, and now you want to convince me that the owner of the house, Bendzhemin Johnson, this young man!

– I not only want, but also I hope to convince you of it if you allow to come into the house and to explain you some circumstances, obviously to unknown to you.

Крукс said so convincingly that the young man, having thought a little, invited him and Johnson to the house.

With nervousness Johnson entered the house which left so recently. He still hoped to meet on the usual place, at a fireplace, Frederica and the son playing at her legs on a floor. But they were not there…

With greedy curiosity Johnson threw the room in which carried out so many joyful and bitter minutes.

All furniture was unfamiliar, alien to it.

Only over a fireplace still painted plates Elizabethan times – a family jewelry Dzhonsonov hung.

And at a fireplace in a deep chair the gray-haired, decrepit old man with the legs wrapped in a plaid, despite warm day sat. The old man took entered an unfriendly view.

– The father – addressed the young man the old man – these people claim that one of them Bendzhemin Johnson and the owner of the house. Whether you wish to catch one more sonny?

– Bendzhemin Johnson – the old man proshamkat, examining Kruks – so called my father… but he died in Greenland long ago, in this damned glacier where froze people!.

– Allow me to tell how there was a business – Kruks answered. – First of all, Johnson not I, and here it. I Kruks. Scientist, historian.

And, addressing the old man, it began the story:

– To you was if I am not mistaken, about two years, when your father, Bendzhemin Johnson, fell into a trap the coalman Gilbert and decided to subject himself to «freezing» to save you and your mother from starvation during unemployment. Also many other suffered much and desperate family workers followed Johnson’s example soon. Being empty Konservatorium on the northwest coast of Greenland quickly was filled with bodies of the frozen workers. But Carlson and Gilbert were mistaken in the calculations.

Freezing of workers did not solve the crisis which endured the English capitalism. Even on the contrary: it only aggravated the inflamed passions of class fight. The most firm workers were revolted with «the frozen human flesh» as they called application of anabiosis to «conservation» of the unemployed, and used freezing as propaganda means. Revolution broke out. Group of the armed workers, having captured airplanes, went to Greenland with the purpose to recover the brothers who were dead asleep and to put them in ranks of fighting.

Then Carlson and Gilbert, wishing to anticipate events, gave on radio the order to the servants in Greenland to blow up Konservatorium, hoping to explain this crime with accident.

The radiotelegram was intercepted, both Carlson and Gilbert incurred deserved punishment. However radio waves fly quicker than any airplane. And when pilots went down at the purpose of the flight, they found the abysses only gaping, smoking, fragments of constructions and pieces of frozen human meat. It was succeeded to dig out several untouched accident of bodies, but also these died from too bystry temperature increase or maybe from suffocation. Works were at a loss the fact that plans underground телохранилищ disappeared. It was necessary only to put a monument over this sad place. There passed seventy three years…

Johnson involuntarily screamed.

– And not so long ago, studying history of our revolution on archival materials, I found Gilbert’s statement with a request for permission in archive of one of the former ministries to it to construct Konservatorium for conservation of the unemployed. Gilbert in detail and eloquently wrote about what benefit can be derived from this means in «business an izzhitiya of periodic crises and related working disorders». The minister’s hand on this statement wrote the instructions: «Of course, it is better if they peacefully rest, than to revolt to resolve…»

But the most interesting was the fact that the plan of mines was enclosed to Gilbert’s application. And in this plan my attention was drawn by one mine going far aside from the general network. I do not know by what reasons builders of mines were guided, laying this gallery. I was interested in another: in this mine there could be bodies which are not injured by accident. I immediately reported about it to our government. The special expedition was equipped. Started excavation. After several weeks of unsuccessful searches we managed to open an entrance to this mine. It was almost not touched, and we went to its depth.

The terrible show was presented to our eyes. Along a long corridor in walls niches in three ranks were arranged, and in them bodies lay. Closer to an entrance, obviously, hot air got, at explosion it killed the people lying in anabiosis at once. Closer to the middle of mines temperature, probably, increased more slowly, and several workers recovered, but they probably died from suffocation, hunger or cold. Their distorted persons and convulsively brought together members spoke about agonal sufferings.

At last in depth of the mine, behind the covered turn, there was equal cold temperature. Here we found only three bodies, other niches were empty. With all precautions we tried to recover them. And we managed it.

The famous astronomer Eduard Lesley whose death was mourned by all scientific world, the second – the poet Mere and the third – Bendzhemin Johnson who is just brought by me here on the airplane was the first of them… If my words are not enough, in confirmation of them I can provide indisputable proofs. I terminated!

All sat silently, struck with the story. At last Johnson heaved a deep sigh and told:

– Means, I overslept seventy three years? Why you did not tell me about it at once? – he addressed reproachfully Kruks.

– My dear, I was afraid to subject you to too strong shock after your awakening.

– Seventy three years!. – in thought Johnson spoke. – What at us now year?

– August, one thousand nine hundred ninety eighth.

– Then I was twenty five years old, so now to me ninety eight…

– But biologically remained to you twenty five – Kruks answered – as all your vital processes were suspended while you lay in a condition of anabiosis.

– But Frederica, Frederik!. – with melancholy Johnson exclaimed.

– Alas, it is absent long ago! – told Kruks.

– My mother died thirty years ago – the old man creaked.

– Here so piece! – the young man exclaimed. And, addressing Johnson, he told: – Then that you my grandfather! You are younger than me, you have a seventy-five-year-old son!.

It seemed to Johnson that he raves. He carried out by a palm on the forehead.

– Yes… son! Samuel! My little Samuel is this old man! Frederica is absent… You – my grandson – addressed he the to the namesake to Bendzhemin – and that woman and the child?.

– My wife and son…

– Your son… Means, my great-grandson! It at the same age at what I left my little Samuel!

Johnson’s thought refused to perceive that this decrepit old man also is his son… The old man the son also could not recognize in young, blossoming, as the twenty-fifth anniversary to the young man of the father…

And they sat confused, in awkward silence looking at each other…

VIII. AGASFER

There passed nearly two months after Johnson returned to life.

In cold, windy September day it played in a garden with the great-grandson George.

This game consisted that the boy took seat in the small flying car – a computer-controlled aviette. Johnson adjusted management personnel, launched the motor, and the boy, loudly shouting from delight, flew around a garden at the height of three meters from the earth. After several circles the device smoothly fell by in advance defined place.

Johnson long could not get used to this new children’s entertainment unknown in his life. He was afraid that to the mechanism there can be something and the child will fall and rasshibtsya. However the aircraft operated perfectly.

«To put the child on the bicycle too it seemed to us once dangerous» – Johnson thought, watching the flying great-grandson.

Suddenly the sharp wind gust rejected an aviette aside. Mechanical control was regained immediately by the broken balance, but wind carried the device aside. An aviette, having changed the direction of flight, flew on an apple-tree and got stuck in tree branches.

The child in a fright cried. Johnson, in not a smaller fright, rushed to the aid of the great-grandson. He quickly scrambled on an apple-tree and began to remove little George.

– And how many times I spoke to you that you did not arrange your flights in a garden! – suddenly Johnson heard a voice of the son Samuel. The old man stood on a porch and in anger shook by a fist.

– There is, apparently, a platform for flights – no, by all means it is necessary in a garden! Not rumors! A trouble with these boys! Here you will break to me apple-trees, I you!.

Johnson was revolted by this old man egoism. The old man Samuel very much loved baked apples and worried for an integrity of apple-trees more, than for life of the grandson.

– Well you, be not forgotten! – Johnson exclaimed, addressing the old man to the son. – This garden was for the first time divorced by me when still you did not exist! Also shout at someone else. Do not forget that I am your father!

– Well, that father? – peevishly the old man answered. – On favor of destiny, my father was a boy! You to me almost in grandsons are fit! Seniors should obey! – tutorially it finished.

– Parents should obey! – Johnson was not appeased, lowering the great-grandson on the earth. – And besides, I also am more senior than you. I am ninety eight years old!

Little George ran to the house to mother.

The old man stood a little more, moving lips, then angrily waved a hand and too left.

Johnson brought an aviette to the big garden arbor replacing a hangar and there wearily fell by a bench among shovels and a rake.

He felt lonely.

With the old man the son he did not have relations at all. The twenty-five-year-old father and the seventy-five-year-old son is the ratio of years, not corresponding to anything, put a barrier between them. As Johnson strained the imagination, it refused to connect together two images: little two-year-old Samuel and this decrepit old man.

Most closer he met with the great-grandson – George. Youth is eternal. The spirit of modern times did not leave the mark on George. Child at the age of George rejoices to both a ray of sunlight, and a tender smile, and red apple the same as children of its age rejoiced thousands years ago. Besides and the person he reminded his son – Samuel child… George’s mother, Elaine, also resembled to Johnson Frederik, and he stopped on her a look of the grieving tenderness more than once. But in the opinion of Elaine, directed on it, he saw only the pity mixed with curiosity and fear as though he was a native of a grave.

And her husband, Johnson’s grandson bearing his name Bendzhemin Johnson, was far to it, as well as all people of this of generation new, alien to it.

Johnson for the first time felt the power of time, the power of a century. As it is difficult for inhabitant of valleys to breathe the rarefied mountain air, so it was difficult for Johnson living in the first quarter of the twentieth century to be applied to living conditions of the end of this century.

Externally everything changed not so strongly as it was possible to assume.

However, London expanded on many miles in width and rose in thousands of skyscrapers up.

Air traffics became almost exclusive way of movement.

And in the cities moving crews were replaced with mobile roads. In the cities it became more silent and purer. Pipes of factories and plants ceased to smoke. The equipment created new ways of getting of energy.

But in public life and in life there were many changes since its time.

Workers died on the steps of a public ladder as lowest group, groups, excellent from above standing and on a suit, and by training, and on habits.

Cars mail exempted workers from the hardest and dirty physical work.

Healthy, simply, but well dressed, cheerful, independent workers were the only class holding all threads of public life in hand. All of them got an education. And Johnson studying as copper money nearly hundred years ago felt awkwardly in their environment, despite all their affability.

They spent all free time more on air, flying on the easy aviettes, than on the earth. They had absolutely other interests, inquiries, entertainments.

Even their short, compressed language, with many new words expressing new concepts was in many respects unclear to Johnson.

They spoke about societies, institutions, new types of property and sport, new to Johnson…

Continually, at each phrase he had to ask:

– And what is it?

It needed to overtake for what proceeded without it throughout seventy three years, and he felt that not in forces to make it. Difficulty was not only in extensiveness of new knowledge, but also that his mind was not so cultivated to apprehend and acquire everything saved up by mankind for three quarters of the century. He could be only the detached, alien onlooker and a subject of observation for others. It also constrained it. He felt the views of the hidden curiosity which are constantly directed to it. It was something like the recovered mummy, an archeological find of an entertaining subject of old times. Between it and society the insuperable side of time lay.

«Agasfer!. – he thought, having remembered the legend read to them in youth. – Agasfer, the eternal wanderer punished by immortality alien to all and all… Fortunately, I am not punished by immortality! I can die… and I want to die! Around the world there is no person of my time, except for, maybe, several old men forgotten by death… But also they will not understand me because all of them time lived, and in my life a failure! There is nobody!.»

Suddenly at it in mind the unexpected thought moved:

«And those two who recovered together with me there, in Greenland?»

It in nervousness rose. Uncontrollably pulled it to these unknown people who suddenly became so dear to it. They lived in at one time with Frederica and small Itself – ale. Some threads are stretched between them… But how to find them? Крукс!. He has to know!

Крукс did not leave Johnson, using him as «a live historical source» for the work on revolution history.

Johnson hurried to Kruks and stated him the request, expecting the answer with such nervousness as though the appointment to the wife and the little son was necessary to it.

Крукс something thought.

– Now end of September… And November, one thousand nine hundred ninety eighth… Well, of course, Eduard Lesley has to be already in Pulkovo Observatory, sit at the telescope in search of disappearing Leonid. In Pulkovo Observatory the best refractor in the world. Lesley, of course, there. In the same place you will find also the poet Mere… He wrote me recently that he goes to professor Lesley. – And, having smiled, Kruks added: – Obviously, all of you, «old men», feel inclination to each other.

Johnson hastily said goodbye and went to a way with the first passenger airship which was flying away to Leningrad.

He did not imagine what forthcoming appointment will be, but felt that all this that else can interest it in life.

IX. UNDER THE STAR SKY

The shivering hand Johnson opened hall doors of Pulkovo Observatory.

The huge round hall sank in a gloom.

When eyes got used to darkness a little, Johnson saw the huge telescope standing among the hall reminding the long-range gun which sent the muzzle to one of openings in a dome. The pipe was strengthened on a massive support along which there was a ladder to fifty steps. Ladders conducted also to the platform for observation at the height of three meters. From this platform, from above, someone’s voice was heard:

– … The deviation from a form of the stretched ellipse and approach to a form of a parabola occurs depending on special action of mass of certain planets to which comets and asteroids are exposed at the movement towards the Sun. The greatest impact in this regard is just exerted by Jupiter which force of an attraction makes almost thousand share of an attraction of the Sun…

When Johnson heard this voice which was accurately distributed in emptiness of the hall when he heard these unclear words it was attacked by shyness.

Why it came here?

What will tell professor Lesley? Unless these parabolas and ellipses are not also unclear to it, as well as new words of new people? But to recede was late, and he coughed.

– Who there?

– It is possible to see professor Lesley?

Someone’s steps quickly taped on iron steps of a ladder.

– I am professor Lesley. What can I serve as?

– And I am Bendzhemin Johnson who… which lay with you in Greenland, shipped in anabiosis. I wanted to talk to you…

And Johnson confusedly began to explain the purpose of the arrival. He said about the loneliness, about the lostness in this the world, new, unclear for it, even that he wanted to die…

Likely, these, new, would not understand it. But professor Lesley understood that easier that many experiences of Johnson were experienced by him.

– Do not mourn, Johnson, not you one suffer from this rupture of time. Something similar was tested also by me, as well as my friend Mere, allow to present him to you.

Johnson shook hands with gone-down Mere, on the old habit long ago left «new» people who restored beautiful and hygienic custom of ancient Romans to raise a hand as a sign of a greeting.

– You too from workers? – Johnson Mere asked though that resembled the worker very little.

– No. I am a poet.

– Why you froze yourself?

– Out of curiosity… And perhaps, and from need…

– And you lay as much time, as well as I?

– No, it is slightly less. I lay at first only two months, was «revived», and then decided to plunge into anabiosis again. I wanted… to keep youth as long as possible! – And Mere laughed.

Despite a difference in development and in former situation, these three people were pulled together by the general strange destiny and an era in which they lived. To Johnson’s surprise, the conversation accepted brisk character. Everyone could tell a lot of things to others.

– Yes, my friend – addressed Lesley Johnson – not one you test isolation from this new world. I was mistaken in many calculations.

I decided to subject myself to anabiosis to have an opportunity to observe the heavenly phenomena which occur in several decades. I wanted to resolve the scientific task most difficult for those times. And what? Now all these tasks are resolved long ago. The science made enormous discoveries, revealed during this time such secrets of the sky about which we did not dare and to dream!

I lagged behind… I infinitely lagged behind – with grief he added after a pause and sighed. – But nevertheless I, seem to me, is happier than you! There – and he pointed to a dome – time is estimated in millions of years. That our centuries mean to stars… You never, Johnson, observed the star sky in the telescope?

– Not before was – Johnson waved a hand.

– See the Moon on our eternal satellite! – And Lesley spent Johnson to the telescope.

Johnson looked in the telescope and involuntarily screamed from surprise. Lesley laughed and told with pleasure of the expert:

– Yes, such tools did not know our time!.

Johnson saw the Moon as though it was from it at distance of several kilometers.

Huge craters lifted the tops, the black, gaping cracks plowed deserts.

Light, bright to pain, and deep shadows gave to a picture extraordinary relief look. It seemed, it is possible to give a hand and to take one of moonstones.

– You see, Johnson, to Long such what it was and thousands years ago. On it nothing changed… For eternity seventy five years – are less, than one moment. Let’s live for eternity if the destiny tore off us of the present! Let’s plunge into anabiosis, into this dream without dreams that, wakening once a century to observe what is created on Earth and in the sky.

In two hundred-three hundred years we, perhaps, will observe life of animals, plants and people on planets… Through thousands of years we will get into the mysteries of the most remote times. And we will see the new people less similar on present, than monkeys on people…

Perhaps, Johnson, future inhabitants of our planet will reduce us on degree of the lowest beings, will shun relationship with us and even to deny this relationship? Let so. We are not sensitive. But we will see such things of which the people who are becoming obsolete the term put by it life do not dare to dream… Unless for the sake of it you should not live, Johnson?

At our request me and Mere is subjected to anabiosis again. You want to join us?

– Again? – with horror Johnson exclaimed. But after long silence he deafly said, having hung the head:

– All the same…