I grabbed the pages, threw a glance diagonally down them... wait!... what was this? «...wishing to achieve, in the year 2006, a discovery in the physics of fast processes, by the present contract I sell my soul...»
— Uh-uhh, — I decided to check. — The discovery happens in thirteen years?
— Yes, how else? You need to finish your degree, graduate school, build up scientific experience, and only then dare to think boldly.
— And live on a salary until then?
— Naturally.
— Like now?
— It’ll be worse, but don’t worry, I’ll get you a side job stoking furnaces. You won’t starve. In ninety-nine they’ll add a couple thousand to your salary, and then once more... actually, no, that one comes after your death. Don’t be sad, discoveries only get made this way, especially the fundamental ones.
— What about Einstein, at twenty-six?
— But you’re Peskov. What did you expect? To lie on the couch, flash some brilliance, and pull off a breakthrough into the unknown? I can ease the road to glory a little. I’ll send you to America in ninety-six. No domestic hassles or family squabbles — stimulates the brain. You won’t have to stoke furnaces, but the first five years will be hard.
— Thanks. I don’t like this.
— Sad.
I felt awkward. I’d wrecked a Nobel future in favor of something vague I wanted here and now. I shifted in my seat and, half-afraid, half-embarrassed of the answer, asked:
— Can you answer a question?
— Go ahead.
— Why was man created?
— I don’t know.
— But what do you think — why was I born?
— No idea. Picture this: you’re sitting on the couch, watching football on TV, and a cockroach crawls out. What do you do?
— Squash it.
— And would you wonder why it came into the world, what its mission is, why it’s there? Would you spend any time thinking about that?
— No.
— Same here — I don’t reflect on the meaning of your life either.
— So people are like insects to you?
— Not always. There are specimens I find satisfying, but on the whole people are preoccupied with one desire, two at most, same as kittens or bunnies. It’s amusing to build pictures out of them — something between billiards and a jigsaw puzzle.
The gentleman stood and walked over to the spheres. He gave the nearest one a push. It rolled a couple of meters, collided with a second, a third, a fourth... Within half a minute, thirteen spheres were rolling across the surface.
— Bingo! — the gentleman exclaimed.
One sphere rolled off, past the light fixture, to where, in the red half-dark, there rose — I strained my eyes until they ached — it couldn’t be! — an enormous mountain, its peak vanishing into the clouds. The mountain was made of millions of spheres just like the one that had just joined it. The gentleman turned toward me.
— That’s the game. Touch one sphere to set them all in motion. And the best one ends up among the chosen. But let’s talk business and come to an agreement.
