“I hear a voice from the Beautiful Far Away,
It calls
me not to heavenly shores...” (Y. Entin. Draft version)
Chapter
One. The Mask
(The
1970s. Institute of Oriental Studies)
The corridors of the Institute of Oriental Studies smelled of old parquet and hopelessness. The silence was broken only by the shuffling footsteps of academicians and the rustle of dissertation pages. Igor adjusted his glasses and buried himself in the manuscript: “Agrarian Reforms in 14th Century Burma.” This was his fortress, his shield. Here, he was “Igor Vsevolodovich” — a respected, young, yet promising PhD. A serious man.
“Igor, have
you heard?” A colleague, a balding specialist in ancient China, peeked into the
office without knocking. “Pionerskaya Pravda is printing that nonsense about
space again. Some upstart… What’s his name? Bulychev?”
Igor felt a
chill run down his spine. His heart skipped a beat, but his face remained
impenetrable. It became a mask. “Haven't read it,” he replied dryly, turning a
page describing the rice harvest.
“I have no
time for childish nonsense. You know that my monograph deadlines are burning.”
“And
rightly so,” the Sinologist nodded. “Science implies no fuss. And this
Bulychev... Probably some dropout student. Writes with his left foot.”
The door
closed, and Igor was left alone. He looked at his academic work. The lines of
typewritten text swam before his eyes. “In the 14th century, the rulers of
Pagan used war elephants to suppress rebellions in the northern provinces...”
Igor
blinked — and reality flickered. Instead of the dusty office, he saw the lilac
sky of an alien planet. “Elephants... No, too simple. Let them be battle
robots. Rusty, creaky, leftovers from an ancient civilization. And they don’t
suppress rebellions, they... babysit children. Yes. A robot nanny who quotes
Shakespeare while changing diapers.”
He shook
his head, chasing away the delusion. In the corner of the page, barely visible
in pencil, he sketched a tiny robot holding a flower in its iron claw. Then
Igor exhaled. His hands were trembling slightly. If that “Sinologist” found out
exactly who was hiding behind the surname Bulychev, and that tonight the
respected Burmologist Igor Vsevolodovich had been chasing space pirates around
the rings of Saturn, it would be the end of his career.
“Not
serious,” they would say in the Party Committee.
“Clownery,”
they would say in the Directorate. It would be a one-way ticket to oblivion.
Prologue.
The Birth
(Five
years prior. Night)
It was cramped at home. A typical Moscow apartment, stuffed with books and souvenirs from business trips. When his wife and daughter fell asleep, Igor quietly made his way to the kitchen. This was his captain's bridge. He closed the door, draped a towel over the glass pane so the light wouldn’t disturb his family, and took out his typewriter.
He inserted
a blank sheet. “Agrarian Reforms” remained in another dimension. Here,
in the kitchen, it smelled of tea and freedom. Igor looked at the drawing taped
to the refrigerator. His daughter had drawn herself. Crooked legs, huge eyes, a
strange flower in her hand.
“Alisa,” he
whispered. “What will happen to you tomorrow?”
He couldn’t
sign the story with his own name. It would be professional suicide. He needed
camouflage. He took his wife’s name — Kira, and his mother’s maiden name —
Bulycheva. Kir Bulychev. It sounded slightly rough, masculine, reliable.
No one would suspect an intellectual orientalist.
Fingers
struck the keys: in that moment, he ceased to be a tired historian. He became a
member of the expedition himself. “I write, and it seems to me that the
kitchen is disappearing. I hear the hum of the ‘Pegasus’ engine. I see Green —
the eternally disgruntled mechanic, amazingly similar to our warehouse manager
Stepanych — grumbling that we forgot to take spare parts...”
Reality
receded. The first lines emerged on the paper: “The space cutter hovered
over the clearing. The grass here was purple and sang when stepped upon...”
Chapter
Two. The Exposure
(1982.
The Director's Office)
Years passed. The “dropout student” had become a celebrity. His books were flying off the shelves; films were being made based on them. The whole country wondered: who is this Kir? A hermit from Siberia? A retired cosmonaut?
Igor sat in
the office of the Institute's Director. The Director, a portly man with a medal
on his lapel, was twirling a newspaper in his hands.
“Igor
Vsevolodovich,” the Director's voice was heavy. “An official directive has
arrived. The USSR State Prize for the screenplay of the film ‘To the Stars
by Hard Ways’. And for these... children's books.”
Igor’s
throat went dry. This was it. The end of his career. Now he would be asked if
he knew this vulgar writer, and everything would be revealed. Or had it already
been revealed?
“The
laureate is announced as a certain Bulychev,” the Director looked up. “But Human
Resources says they have no passport with such a surname on file. And a prize,
Igor Vsevolodovich, cannot be awarded to a pseudonym. We need a human being. Do
you know who this is?”
The silence
in the office became tangible. The hum of a trolleybus could be heard outside
the window. Igor realized: there was nowhere left to run.
“I know,”
he said quietly.
“It is me.”
The
Director froze. His eyebrows crept up, turning his face into a mask of
amazement.
“You? A Doctor
of Sciences? A serious scientist? You write about... talking goats and flying
saucers?”
“About the
future,” Igor corrected him.
His voice
grew stronger. “I write about a future in which we would all like to live.”
The
Director was silent for a minute. Then he chuckled. Then, suddenly, he smiled —
for the first time in ten years of working together. The smile was almost
childlike.
“But I read
it,” whispered the Director. “To my granddaughter. And I... got carried away
myself. About the Chatterbird. It’s well written, damn it.” He reached his hand
across the table: “Congratulations, Comrade... Bulychev. But do submit your new
monograph on Burma on time.”
Epilogue
He walked
out of the Institute building. It was 1982 outside. Wet snow was falling from
the sky, but to Igor, it seemed like stardust. He was no longer split in two.
The Myelophone no longer needed to be hidden. And at home, Alisa was waiting
for him. The real one. Who, fortunately, had not flown anywhere, but simply
grew up.
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