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For what ti,

You ait

Catchingout of tune with the quiet feed off the earphones and switched the player off No I hadn’t co

What would Jaade Other, his human client, and the author of the provocative letters

And as I going to do?

I was going to look for what I needed desperately If it came to it, there had to be toilet facilities downstairs, at the security point

Somewhere outside the ¡ªit see ponderously I jumped to my feet, but failed to discover anyone in the apartment

"Hi there, you mob," said a voice outside the s I leaned out over the sill and surveyed the wall of the As-sol building I spotted some s open two floors up¡ªthat here those aggressive chords in that unusual arrange fro tiuts, And just recently I happened to notice How long it is since I squeezed out uts But I used to squeeze them out so fine! No one else could squeeze theht out there for everyone, I was the only one squeezing thereater contrast with the quiet voice of Zoya Yashchenko, the lead singer of White Guard, than this incredible chanson to a bass guitar But there was soh a three-chord bridge and continued with his lament:

Sometimes now I still squeeze them out,

But now it’s not the way it used to be

They just don’t squeeze out the saain the way I used to

I started to laugh It had all the distinctive features of Russian "gangster" songs¡ªa lyric hero recalling his for his present fallen state and lalory of for suspicion that if this song were played on Radio Chanson, ninety percent of the listeners wouldn’t even suspect it was a send-up

The guitar gave a few sighs, and then the voice launched into a new song:

I’ve never been in the loony bin, So stop asking ed in the cardboard box, found a bottle of vodka and a stick of s, pulled the door shut, and set off up the stairs

Finding thea jackha jackha, The lovely sun no longer shines There are no vicious kids frolicking Around the garbage du the bell, with absolutely no confidence that anyone would hear me But the music stopped, and about thirty seconds later the door opened

Standing there in the doorith an amiable smile on his face was a short, stockythe instruuitar With a certain morose satisfaction, I observed that he had a "bandit" haircut too The bard earing threadbare jeans and a very a T-shirt¡ªa paratrooper in a Russian unifor the throat of a soldier in a US uniforan "We can remind you on the Second World War!"

"That’s not bad, either," the guitarist said, looking at my T-shirt "Come on in"

He took the vodka and the salami and moved back inside his apartht

A hu

And such a confused jumble of an aura that I decided then and there not to try to understand his character Gray, pink, red, and blue tones a really iuitarist inside

His apart asthe guitar But then, that was none of my business What was really funny was that, apart from its size, the apartment looked like an exact copy ofjob hastily wound up and left inco in thespace¡ªat least forty-five feet by forty-five¡ªthere was a chair, and in front of the chair a ood quality professional ae speakers

Over by the wall there were three iuitarist opened the biggest one¡ªit was absolutely empty¡ªand put the bottle of vodka in the freezer

"It’s warerator yet," I said

"It happens," the bard sympathized "Las"

"What do you mean, ’las’?" I asked, puzzled

"That’s my name, Las Not the one inmyself "That is the name in my passport"

"It happens," the bard syhth," I explained

Las scratched the back of his head thoughtfully He looked at the open s and explained, "I opened them so it wouldn’t be so loud Otherwise , but I ran out of money"

"That seems to be a common problem," I said cautiously "I don’t even have a toilet"

Las smiled triumphantly "I do I’ve had it for a week That door over there"

When I got back, Las was sadly slicing the salalish?"

"Did you see the company label on it?" Las asked me " ’We invented the first toilet’ Just had to buy it, didn’t I, with that written on it? I keep e it a little bit, write: ’We were the first to guess that people need’"

"I get the idea," I said "But then, I do have a shower installed"

"Really?" the bard said, standing up "I’ve been drea a shower for three days"

I held out the keys to hianize the hors d’oeuvres," Las said happily "The vodka has to cool for another ten minutes anyway And I’ll be quick"

The door slaer’s apartment¡ªalone with an amplifier that itched on, a half-sliced stick of salaerators

Well, how about that! I would never have expected the easygoing social relations of a friendly communal apartment¡ªor a student hostel¡ªto exist inside buildings like this

You use et washed in your shower And Pyotr Petrovich has a refrigerator, and Ivan Ivanovich pro some vodka¡ªhe trades in the stuff, and Se care

Probably the ht the every last bit of , steal, or borrow And it was only afterward that the happy owners had realized that an apart work That any construction fir off soht a home here That they still had to pay every es, the park, and the e there half-eedy if someone was a bit short of cash But for the first tiicomedy

How many people really lived in the Assol complex? If I was the only one who had co in the e bard had ed?

One person on each floor? It seemed like even less than that

But then who had sent the letter?

I tried to i letters out of the newspaper Pravda with nail scissors I couldn’t So a bit inative

I closedacross my pupils Then I opened ht Not the slightest trace of any ood instrument that has been in the hands of an Other or a potential Other remembers that touch for years

There was no trace anywhere of blue ative emotions If the owner of the apartment ever fell into a depression, then he did it away froood time that it burned away the bluethe rest of the salaht to see if it was really a good idea to eat it The salaent to go doith food poisoning

"Now that’s the right te the wine thermometer fro Solycerine, so that drinking it’s like sing liquid nitrogen Here’s to our acquaintance!"

We drank a glass and followed it with salaht them from my apartet any food in that day

"The entire building lives like this," he explained "Well no, of course there are soh money to finish their places and furnish the in an e for the petty riffraff like you and me to finish our places off and , the casino’s e out from sheer boredom two of the at the bushes in the yard Said they’d seen so horrible They probably did too¡ªthey were as high as kites"

After he finished speaking, Las took a pack of Belo look "Like one?"

I hadn’t been expecting a ood style to fool around with marijuana

I shook my head and asked, "Do you smoke hed And then he suddenly realized "Hey, come on, Anton! These are Belomor! Not dope! I used to smoke Gitanes before, until I realized they were no different froinal," I said

"Ah, what’s that got to do with anything?" said Las, offended "I’inal All you have to do is be some other"¡ªI started, but Las went on caluy, a bit different fro on a show But I like s Beloive up!"

"There’s nothing bad about being different, so out a feeler

"But really beco different is hard," Las replied "Just a couple of days ago I had this idea"

I pricked ain The letter had been sent two days earlier Could everything really have coether so neatly?

"I was in this hospital, and while I aiting to be seen, I read all the price lists," Las went on, not suspecting a trap "And what they do there is serious stuff, they make artificial body parts out of titanium to replace what people have lost Shin-bones, knee joints and hip joints, jawbones Patches for the skull, teeth, and other sured out how much it would cost to have all your bones totally replaced It came out at about one million seven hundred thousand bucks But I reckon on a bulk order like that you could get a good discount Twenty-thirty percent And if you could convince the doctors it was good publicity, you could probably get aith half a million!"

"What for?" I asked Thanks to my hairdresser, my hair hadn’t stood up on end¡ªthere was nothing left to stand up

"It’s just a fascinating idea!" Las explained "Iine you want to hammer in a nail! You just raise your fist and smash it down, and the nail sinks into concrete Those bones are titanium! Or say someone tries to punch you nah, of course, there are a nu on too well yet But I’ress"

He poured us another glass each

"It seeress lies in a different direction," I went on, sticking to reater use of the potential abilities of our organiss that lie hidden inside us! Telekinesis, telepathy"

Las looked a bit sad I was gettingto play the idiot

"Can you read ht now," I confessed

"I don’t think we ought to invent any extra dimensions of reality," Las explained "We’ve already known for a long tihts, levitate and do all that other nonsense, there’d be some proof"

"If someone suddenly acquired abilities like that, they’d hide theh the Twilight "A really different, Other kind of being would provoke the envy and fear of people around hin of excitement Just skepticism

"Well, surely this ive the woman he loves and his children the saradually take over froical species"

"But what if the special abilities couldn’t be inherited?" I asked "Or they weren’t necessarily inherited? And you couldn’t transmit them to anyone else either? Then you’d have the people and the Others existing independently And if there weren’t many of the Others, then they’d hide their abilities from everybody else"

"See about a random mutation that produces extrasensory abilities," Las said, thinking out loud "If that mutation is random and recessive, it’s absolutely no use to us But you can actually have titaniuood idea," I muttered

We had a drink

"You know, this is a pretty weird situation we’re in here!" Las ! Hundreds of apart in theet up to! It takes your breath away! And what a video you could shoot! Just iine it¡ªthe luxurious interiors, e exercisepools and casino tables wrapped in plastic sheeting And a little girl wandering through it all Wandering around and singing It doesn’t even matter what"

"Do you shoot videos?" I asked cautiously

"Nah" Las frowned "Well just the once I helped this punk band I know shoot one They showed it on MTV, but then it was banned"

"What was so terrible about it?"

"Nothing really," said Las "It was just a song, nothing offensive about it, in fact it was about love The visuals were unusual We shot them in a hospital for patients with ht in a hall, put on the song ’Captain, Captain, Why Have You Left the Horse?’ and invited the patients to dance So they danced to the strobes Or they tried to And then we laid the new sound sequence over the visuals The result was really stylish But you really can’t show it It has a bad feel soined the "visuals" and I squirood as a video producer," Las ad of ram for all sorts of hardcore weirdos And what do you think? This well-known songwriter immediately called the radio station and said all his life in his songs he’d been teaching people about good, and about eternal values, but this one song had cancelled out his entire life’s work You , I think¡ªdid you think it was encouraging people to do bad things?"

"I think it made fun of bad attitudes," I said

"Thank you," Las said sadly "But that’s exactly the problem¡ª there are too many people on’t understand that They’ll think it’s all for real"

"That’s what the fools will think," I said, trying to console the unacknowledged bard

"But there are more of them!" Las exclaimed "And they haven’t perfected head replacements yet"

He reached for the bottle, poured the vodka and said, "You drop in any tiet you a key for an apartment on the fifteenth floor The apartment’s empty, but it has a toilet"

"Won’t the owner object?" I asked with a laugh

"It’s all the saree on how to share out the space"