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Title: No, No, Not Rogov!
Author: Smith, Cordwainer [Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony]
   (1913-1966)
Date of first publication: February 1959
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   If, February 1959
   [Buffalo, New York: Quinn Publishing Co.]
   [first edition]
Date first posted: 16 April 2017
Date last updated: 16 April 2017
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1425

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






NO, NO, NOT ROGOV!


  "We may even spy into the brain of the chief rascal
  himself....  Wouldn't it be wonderful if our machine
  could stun him and leave him addled at his desk?"



BY CORDWAINER SMITH



_That golden shape on the golden steps shook and fluttered like a bird
gone mad--like a bird imbued with an intellect and a soul, and,
nevertheless, driven mad by ecstasies and terrors beyond human
understanding.  A thousand worlds watched._

_Had the ancient calendar continued, this would have been A.D. 13,582.
After defeat, after disappointment, after ruin and reconstruction,
mankind had leaped among the stars._

_Out of the shock of meeting inhuman art, of confronting non-human
dances, mankind had made a superb esthetic effort and had leaped upon
the stage of all the worlds._

_The golden steps reeled.  Some eyes that watched had retinas.  Some
had crystalline cones.  Yet all eyes were fixed upon the golden shape
which interpreted_ "The Glory and Affirmation of Man" _in the
Inter-World Dance Festival of what might have been A.D. 13,582._

_Once again mankind was winning the contest.  Music and dance were
hypnotic beyond the limits of systems, compelling, shocking to human
and inhuman eyes.  The dance was a triumph of shock--the shock of
dynamic beauty._

_The golden shape on the golden steps executed shimmering intricacies
of meaning.  The body was gold and still human.  The body was a woman,
but more than a woman.  On the golden steps, in the golden light, she
trembled and fluttered like a bird gone mad._



The Ministry of State Security had been positively shocked when they
found that a Nazi agent, more heroic than prudent, had almost reached
N. Rogov.

Rogov was worth more to the Soviet armed forces than any two air
armies, more than three motorized divisions.  His brain was a weapon, a
weapon for the Soviet power.

Since the brain was a weapon, Rogov was a prisoner.

He didn't mind.

Rogov was a pure Russian type, broad-faced, sandy-haired, blue-eyed,
with whimsy in his smile and amusement in the wrinkles at the tops of
his cheeks.

"Of course I'm a prisoner," Rogov used to say.  "I am a prisoner of
State service to the Soviet peoples.  But the workers and peasants are
good to me.  I am an academician of the All Union Academy of Sciences,
a major general in the Red Air Force, a professor in the University of
Kharkov, a deputy works manager of the Red Flag Combat Aircraft
Production Trust.  From each of these I draw a salary."

Sometimes he would narrow his eyes at his Russian scientific colleagues
and ask them in dead earnest, "Would I serve capitalists?"

The affrighted colleagues would try to stammer their way out of the
embarrassment, protesting their common loyalty to Stalin or Beria, or
Zhukov, or Molotov, or Bulganin, as the case may have been.

Rogov would look very Russian: calm, mocking, amused.  He would let
them stammer.

Then he'd laugh.

Solemnity transformed into hilarity, he would explode into bubbling,
effervescent, good-humored laughter: "Of course I could not serve the
capitalists.  My little Anastasia would not let me."

The colleagues would smile uncomfortably and would wish that Rogov did
not talk so wildly, or so comically, or so freely.

Rogov was afraid of nothing.  Most of his colleagues were afraid of
each other, of the Soviet system, of the world, of life, and of death.

Perhaps Rogov had once been ordinary and mortal like other people, and
full of fears.

But he had become the lover, the colleague, the husband of Anastasia
Fyodorovna Cherpas.

Comrade Cherpas had been his rival, his antagonist, his competitor, in
the struggle for scientific eminence in the frontiers of Russian
science.  Russian science could never overtake the inhuman perfection
of German method, the rigid intellectual and moral discipline of German
teamwork, but the Russians could and did get ahead of the Germans by
giving vent to their bold, fantastic imaginations.  Rogov had pioneered
the first rocket launchers of 1939.  Cherpas had finished the job by
making the best of the rockets radio-directed.

Rogov in 1942 had developed a whole new system of photo-mapping.
Comrade Cherpas had applied it to color film.  Rogov, sandy-haired,
blue-eyed, and smiling, had recorded his criticisms of Comrade Cherpas'
naivete and theoretical unsoundness at the top-secret meetings of
Russian scientists during the black winter nights of 1943.  Comrade
Cherpas, her butter-yellow hair flowing down like living water to her
shoulders, her unpainted face gleaming with fanaticism, intelligence,
and dedication, would snarl her own defiance at him, deriding his
Communist theory, pinching at his pride, hitting his hypotheses where
they were weakest.

By 1944 a Rogov-Cherpas quarrel had become something worth traveling to
see.

In 1945 they were married.

Their courtship was secret, their wedding a surprise, their partnership
a miracle in the upper ranks of Russian science.

The emigre press had reported that the great scientist, Peter Kapitza,
once remarked, "Rogov and Cherpas, there is a team.  They're
Communists, good Communists; but they're better than that!  They're
_Russian_, Russian enough to beat the world.  Look at them.  That's the
future, our Russian future!"  Perhaps the quotation was an
exaggeration, but it did show the enormous respect in which both Rogov
and Cherpas were held by their colleagues in Soviet science.

Shortly after their marriage strange things happened to them.

Rogov remained happy.  Cherpas was radiant.

Nevertheless, the two of them began to have haunted expressions, as
though they had seen things which words could not express, as though
they had stumbled upon secrets too important to be whispered even to
the most secure agents of the Soviet State Police.

In 1947 Rogov had an interview with Stalin.  As he left Stalin's office
in the Kremlin, the great leader himself came to the door, his forehead
wrinkled in thought, nodding, "_Da, da, da._"

Even his own personal staff did not know why Stalin was saying "Yes,
yes, yes," but they did see the orders that went forth marked ONLY BY
SAFE HAND, and TO BE READ AND RETURNED.  NOT RETAINED, and furthermore
stamped FOR AUTHORIZED EYES ONLY AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES TO BE
COPIED.

Into the true and secret Soviet budget that year by the direct personal
orders of a noncommittal Stalin, an item was added for "Project
Telescope."  Stalin tolerated no inquiry, brooked no comment.

A village which had had a name became nameless.

A forest which had been opened to the workers and peasants became
military territory.

Into the central post office in Kharkov there went a new box number for
the _village of Ya. Ch_.

Rogov and Cherpas, comrades and lovers, scientists both and Russians
both, disappeared from the everyday lives of their colleagues.  Their
faces were no longer seen at scientific meetings.  Only rarely did they
emerge.

On the few occasions they were seen, usually going to and from Moscow
at the time the All Union budget was made up each year, they seemed
smiling and happy.  But they did not make jokes.

What the outside world did not know was that Stalin in giving them
their own project, granting them a paradise restricted to themselves,
had seen to it that a snake went with them in the paradise.  The snake
this time was not one, but two personalities--Gausgofer and Gauck.



Stalin died.

Beria died too--less willingly.

The world went on.

Everything went into the forgotten village of Ya. Ch. and nothing came
out.

It was rumored that Khrushchev himself visited Rogov and Cherpas.  It
was even whispered that Khrushchev said as he went to the Kharkov
airport to fly back to Moscow, "It's big, big, big.  There'll be no
cold war if they do it.  There won't be any war of any kind.  We'll
finish capitalism before the capitalists can ever begin to fight.  If
they do it.  If they do it."  Khrushchev was reported to have shaken
his head slowly in perplexity and to have said nothing more but to have
put his initials on the unmodified budget of Project Telescope when a
trusted messenger next brought him an envelope from Rogov.

Anastasia Cherpas became a mother.  Their first boy looked like the
father.  He was followed by a little girl.  Then another little boy.
The children didn't stop Cherpas' work.  The family had a large _dacha_
and trained nursemaids took over the household.

Every night the four of them dined together.

Rogov, Russian, humorous, courageous, amused.

Cherpas, older, more mature, more beautiful than ever, but just as
biting, just as cheerful, just as sharp as she had ever been.

But then the other two, two who sat with them across the years of all
their days, the two colleagues who had been visited upon them by the
all-powerful word of Stalin himself.

Gausgofer was a female: bloodless, narrow-faced, with a voice like a
horse's whinny.  She was a scientist and a police woman, and competent
at both jobs.  In 1920 she had reported her own mother's whereabouts to
the Bolshevik Terror Committee.  In 1924 she had commanded her father's
execution.  He was a Russian German of the old Baltic nobility and he
had tried to adjust his mind to the new system, but he had failed.  In
1930 she had let her lover trust her a little too much.  He was a
Rumanian Communist, very high in the Party, but he had a sneaking
sympathy for Trotsky.  When he whispered into her ear in the privacy of
their bedroom, whispered with the tears pouring down his face, she had
listened affectionately and quietly and had delivered his words to the
police the next morning.

With that she came to Stalin's attention.

Stalin had been tough.  He addressed her brutally, "Comrade, you have
some brains.  I can see you know what Communism is all about.  You
understand loyalty.  You're going to get ahead and serve the Party and
the working class, but is that all you want?"  He had spat the question
at her.

She was so astonished that she gaped.

The old man had changed his expression, favoring her with leering
benevolence.  He had put his forefinger on her chest, "Study science,
Comrade.  Study science.  Communism plus science equals victory.
You're too clever to stay in police work."

Gausgofer fell in love with Rogov the moment she saw him.

Gausgofer fell in hate--and hate can be as spontaneous and miraculous
as love--with Cherpas the moment she saw _her_.

But Stalin had guessed that too.

With the bloodless, fanatic Gausgofer he had sent a man named B. Gauck.

Gauck was solid, impassive, blank-faced.  In body he was about the same
height as Rogov.  Where Rogov was muscular, Gauck was flabby.  Where
Rogov's skin was fair and shot through with the pink and health of
exercise, Gauck's skin was like stale lard, greasy, gray-green, sickly
even on the best of days.

Gauck's eyes were black and small.  His glance was as cold and sharp as
death.  Gauck had no friends, no enemies, no beliefs, no enthusiasms.

Gauck never drank, never went out, never received mail, never sent
mail, never spoke a spontaneous word.  He was never rude, never kind,
never friendly, never really withdrawn: He couldn't withdraw any more
than the constant withdrawal of all his life.

Rogov had turned to his wife in the secrecy of their bedroom soon after
Gausgofer and Gauck came and had said, "Anastasia, is that man sane?"

Cherpas intertwined the fingers of her beautiful, expressive hands.
She who had been the wit of a thousand scientific meetings was now at a
loss for words.  She looked up at her husband with a troubled
expression.  "I don't know, comrade ... I just don't know."

Rogov smiled his amused Slavic smile.  "At the least then I don't think
Gausgofer knows either."

Cherpas snorted with laughter and picked up her hairbrush.  "That she
doesn't.  She really doesn't know, does she?  I'll wager she doesn't
even know to whom he reports."

That conversation had reached into the past.  Gauck, Gausgofer,
bloodless eyes and the black eyes--they remained.

Every dinner the four sat down together.

Every morning the four met in the laboratory.

Rogov's great courage, high sanity, and keen humor kept the work going.

Cherpas' flashing genius fueled him whenever the routine overloaded his
magnificent intellect.

Gausgofer spied and watched and smiled her bloodless smiles; sometimes,
curiously enough, Gausgofer made genuinely constructive suggestions.
She never understood the whole frame of reference of their work, but
she knew enough of the mechanical and engineering details to be very
useful on occasion.

Gauck came in, sat down quietly, said nothing, did nothing.  He did not
even smoke.  He never fidgeted.  He never went to sleep.  He just
watched.

The laboratory grew and with it there grew the immense configuration of
the espionage machine.



In theory what Rogov had proposed and Cherpas seconded was imaginable.
It consisted of an attempt to work out an integrated theory for all the
electrical and radiation phenomena accompanying consciousness, and to
duplicate the electrical functions of mind without the use of animal
material.  The range of potential products was immense.

The first product Stalin had asked for was a receiver, if possible, one
capable of tuning in the thoughts of a human mind and of translating
those thoughts either into a punch tape machine, an adapted German
Hellschreiber machine, or phonetic speech.  If the grids could be
turned around, the brain-equivalent machine as a transmitter might be
able to send out stunning forces which would paralyze or kill the
process of thought.

At its best, Rogov's machine was designed to confuse human thought over
great distances, to select human targets to be confused, and to
maintain an electronic jamming system which would jam straight into the
human mind without the requirement of tubes or receivers.

He had succeeded--in part.  He had given himself a violent headache in
the first year of work.

In the third year he had killed mice at a distance of ten kilometers.
In the seventh year he had brought on mass hallucinations and a wave of
suicides in a neighboring village.  It was this which impressed
Khrushchev.

Rogov was now working on the receiver end.  No one had ever explored
the infinitely narrow, infinitely subtle bands of radiation which
distinguished one human mind from another, but Rogov was trying, as it
were, to tune in on minds far away.

He had tried to develop a telepathic helmet of some kind, but it did
not work.  He had then turned away from the reception of pure thought
to the reception of visual and auditory images.  Where the nerve-ends
reached the brain itself, he had managed over the years to distinguish
whole packets of micro-phenomena, and on some of these he had managed
to get a fix.

With infinitely delicate tuning he had succeeded one day in picking up
the eyesight of their second chauffeur, and had managed, thanks to a
needle thrust in just below his own right eyelid, to "see" through the
other man's eyes as the other man, all unaware, washed their Zis
limousine sixteen hundred meters away.

Cherpas had surpassed his feat later that winter, and had managed to
bring in an entire family having dinner over in a nearby city.  She had
invited B. Gauck to have a needle inserted into his cheekbone so that
he could see with the eyes of an unsuspecting spied-on stranger.  Gauck
had refused any kind of needles, but Gausgofer had joined in the
experiment and had expressed her satisfaction with the work.

The espionage machine was beginning to take form.

Two more steps remained.  The first step consisted of tuning in on some
remote target, such as the White House in Washington or the NATO
Headquarters outside Paris.

The second problem consisted of finding a method of jamming those minds
at a distance, stunning them so that the subject personnel fell into
tears, confusion, or insanity.

Rogov had tried, but he had never gotten more than thirty kilometers
from the nameless village of Ya. Ch.

One November there had been seventy cases of hysteria, most of them
ending in suicide, down in the city of Kharkov several hundred
kilometers away, but Rogov was not sure that his own machine was doing
it.

Comrade Gausgofer dared to stroke his sleeve.  Her white lips smiled
and her watery eyes grew happy as she said in her high, cruel voice,
"_You_ can do it, comrade.  You can do it."

Cherpas looked on with contempt.  Gauck said nothing.

The female agent Gausgofer saw Cherpas' eyes upon her, and for a moment
an arc of living hatred leaped between the two women.

The three of them went back to work on the machine.

Gauck sat on his stool and watched them.



It was the year in which Eristratov died that the machine made a
breakthrough.  Eristratov died after the Soviet and People's
democracies had tried to end the cold war with the Americans.

It was May.  Outside the laboratory the squirrels ran among the trees.
The leftovers from the night's rain dripped on the ground and kept the
earth moist.  It was comfortable to leave a few windows open and to let
the smell of the forest into the workshop.

The smell of their oil-burning heaters, the stale smell of insulation,
of ozone, and of the heated electronic gear was something with which
all of them were much too familiar.

Rogov had found that his eyesight was beginning to suffer because he
had to get the receiver needle somewhere near his optic nerve in order
to obtain visual impressions from the machine.  After months of
experimentation with both animal and human subjects he had decided to
copy one of their last experiments, successfully performed on a
prisoner boy fifteen years of age, by having the needle slipped
directly through the skull, up and behind the eye.  Rogov had disliked
using prisoners, because Gauck, speaking on behalf of security, always
insisted that a prisoner used in experiments be destroyed in not less
than five days from the beginning of the experiment.  Rogov had
satisfied himself that the skull-and-needle technique was safe, but he
was very tired of trying to get frightened, unscientific people to
carry the load of intense, scientific attentiveness required by the
machine.

Somewhat ill-humored, he shouted at Gauck, "Have you ever known what
this is all about?  You've been here years.  Do you know what we're
trying to do?  Don't you ever want to take part in the experiments
yourself?  Do you realize how many years of mathematics have gone into
the making of these grids and the calculation of these wave patterns?
Are you good for anything?"

Gauck had said, tonelessly and without anger, "Comrade professor, I am
obeying orders.  You are obeying orders too.  I've never impeded you."

Rogov raved, "I know you never got in my way.  We're all good servants
of the Soviet State.  It's not a question of loyalty.  It's a question
of enthusiasm.  Don't you ever want to glimpse the science we're
making?  We are a hundred years or a thousand years ahead of the
capitalist Americans.  Doesn't that excite you?  Aren't you a human
being?  Why don't you take part?  How will you understand me when I
explain it?"

Gauck said nothing; he looked at Rogov with his beady eyes.  His
dirty-gray face did not change expression.  Cherpas said, "Go ahead,
Nikolai.  The comrade can follow if he wants to."

Gausgofer looked enviously at Cherpas.  She seemed inclined to keep
quiet, but then had to speak.  She said, "Do go ahead, comrade
professor."

Said Rogov, "_Kharosho_, I'll do what I can.  The machine is now ready
to receive minds over immense distances."  He wrinkled his lip in
amused scorn.  "We may even spy into the brain of the chief rascal
himself and find out what Eisenhower is planning to do today against
the Soviet people.  Wouldn't it be wonderful if our machine could stun
him and leave him sitting addled at his desk?"

Gauck commented, "Don't try it.  Not without orders."

Rogov ignored the interruption and went on.  "First I receive.  I don't
know what I will get, who I will get, or where they will be.  All I
know is that this machine will reach out across all the minds of men
and beasts now living and it will bring the eyes and ears of a single
mind directly into mine.  With the new needle going directly into the
brain it will be possible for me to get a very sharp fixation of
position.  The trouble with that boy last week was that even though we
knew he was seeing something outside this room, he appeared to be
getting sounds in a foreign language and did not know enough English or
German to realize where or what the machine had taken him to see."

Cherpas laughed, "I'm not worried.  I saw then it was safe.  You go
first, my husband.  If our comrades don't mind--?"

Gauck nodded.

Gausgofer lifted her bony hand breathlessly to her skinny throat and
said, "Of course, Comrade Rogov, of course.  You did all the work.  You
must be the first."

Rogov sat down.

A white-smocked technician brought the machine over to him.  It was
mounted on three rubber-tired wheels and it resembled the small X-ray
units used by dentists.  In place of the cone at the head of the X-ray
machine there was a long, incredibly tough needle.  It had been made
for them by the best surgical steel craftsmen in Prague.

Another technician came up with a shaving bowl, a brush, and a straight
razor.  Under the gaze of Gauck's deadly eyes he shaved an area of four
square centimeters on the top of Rogov's head.

Cherpas herself then took over.  She set her husband's head in the
clamp and used a micrometer to get the skull-fittings so tight and so
accurate that the needle would push through the dura mater at exactly
the right point.

All this work she did deftly with kind, very strong fingers.  She was
gentle, but she was firm.  She was his wife, but she was also his
fellow scientist and his colleague in the Soviet State.

She stepped back and looked at her work.  She gave him one of their own
very special smiles, the secret gay smiles which they usually exchanged
with each other only when they were alone.  "You won't want to do this
every day.  We're going to have to find some way of getting into the
brain without using this needle.  But it won't hurt you."

"Does it matter if it does hurt?" said Rogov.  "This is the triumph of
all our work.  _Bring it down_."

Cherpas, her eyes gleaming with attention, reached over and pulled down
the handle which brought the tough needle to within a tenth of a
millimeter of the right place.

Rogov spoke very carefully: "All I felt was a little sting.  You can
turn the power on now."

Gausgofer could not contain herself.  Timidly she addressed Cherpas,
"_May_ I turn on the power?"

Cherpas nodded.  Gauck watched.  Rogov waited.  Gausgofer pulled down
the bayonet switch.

The power went on.

With an impatient twist of her hand, Anastasia Cherpas ordered the
laboratory attendants to the other end of the room.  Two or three of
them had stopped working and were staring at Rogov, staring like dull
sheep.  They looked embarrassed and then they huddled in a
white-smocked herd at the other end of the laboratory.

The wet May wind blew in on all of them.  The scent of forest and
leaves was about them.

The three watched Rogov.

Rogov's complexion began to change.  His face became flushed.  His
breathing was so loud and heavy they could hear it several meters away.
Cherpas fell on her knees in front of him, eyebrows lifted in mute
inquiry.

Rogov did not dare nod, not with a needle in his brain.  He spoke
through flushed lips, speaking thickly and heavily,
"Do--not--stop--now."


Rogov himself did not know what was happening.  He had thought he might
see an American room, or a Russian room, or a tropical colony.  He
might see palm trees, or forests, or desks.  He might see guns or
buildings, washrooms or beds, hospitals, homes, churches.  He might see
with the eyes of a child, a woman, a man, a soldier, a philosopher, a
slave, a worker, a savage, a religious, a Communist, a reactionary, a
governor, a policeman.  He might hear voices; he might hear English, or
French, or Russian, Swahili, Hindi, Malay, Chinese, Ukrainian,
Armenian, Turkish, Greek.  He did not know.

None of these things had happened.

It seemed to him that he had left the world, that he had left time.
The hours and the centuries shrank up like the meters, and the machine,
unchecked, reached out for the most powerful signal which any human
mind had transmitted.  Rogov did not know it, but the machine had
conquered time.

The machine had reached the dance, the human challenger and the dance
festival of the year that might have been A.D. 13,582.

Before Rogov's eyes the golden shape and the golden steps shook and
fluttered in a ritual a thousand times more compelling than hypnotism.
The rhythms meant nothing and everything to him.  This was Russia, this
was Communism.  This was his life--indeed it was his soul acted out
before his very eyes.

For a second, the last second of his ordinary life, he looked through
flesh and blood eyes and saw the shabby woman whom he had once thought
beautiful.  He saw Anastasia Cherpas, and he did not care.

His vision concentrated once again on the dancing image, this woman,
those postures, that dance!

Then the sound came in--music that would have made a Tschaikovsky weep,
orchestras which would have silenced Shostakovich or Khachaturian
forever.

The people-who-were-not-people between the stars had taught mankind
many arts.  Rogov's mind was the best of its time, but his time was
far, far behind the time of the great dance.  With that one vision
Rogov went firmly and completely mad.

He became blind to the sight of Cherpas, Gausgofer, and Gauck.  He
forgot the village of Ya. Ch.  He forgot himself.  He was like a fish,
bred in stale fresh water, which is thrown for the first time into a
living stream.  He was like an insect emerging from the chrysalis.  His
twentieth-century mind could not hold the imagery and the impact of the
music and the dance.

But the needle was there and the needle transmitted into his mind more
than his mind could stand.

The synapses of his brain flicked like switches.  The future flooded
into him.

He fainted.

Cherpas leaped forward and lifted the needle.  Rogov fell out of the
chair.



It was Gauck who got the doctors.  By nightfall they had Rogov resting
comfortably and under heavy sedation.  There were two doctors, both
from the military headquarters.  Gauck had obtained authorization for
their services by a direct telephone call to Moscow.

Both the doctors were annoyed.  The senior one never stopped grumbling
at Cherpas.

"You should not have done it, Comrade Cherpas.  Comrade Rogov should
not have done it either.  You can't go around sticking things into
brains.  That's a medical problem.  None of you people are doctors of
medicine.  It's all right for you to contrive devices with the
prisoners, but you can't inflict things like this on Soviet scientific
personnel.  I'm going to get blamed because I can't bring Rogov back.
You heard what he was saying.  All he did was mutter, 'That golden
shape on the golden steps, that music, that me is a true me, that
golden shape, that golden shape, I want to be with that golden shape,'
and rubbish like that.  Maybe you've ruined a first-class brain
forever--"  He stopped short as though he had said too much.  After
all, the problem was a security problem and apparently both Gauck and
Gausgofer represented the security agencies.

Gausgofer turned her watery eyes on the doctor and said in a low, even,
unbelievably poisonous voice, "Could _she_ have done it, comrade
doctor?"

The doctor looked at Cherpas, answering Gausgofer, "How?  You were
there.  I wasn't.  _How_ could she have done it?  _Why_ should she do
it?  You were there."

Cherpas said nothing.  Her lips were compressed tight with grief.  Her
yellow hair gleamed, but her hair was all that remained, at that
moment, of her beauty.  She was frightened and she was getting ready to
be sad.  She had no time to hate foolish women or to worry about
security; she was concerned with her colleague, her lover, her husband
Rogov.

There was nothing much for them to do except to wait.  They went into a
large room and waited.

The servants had laid out immense dishes of cold sliced meat, pots of
caviar, and an assortment of sliced breads, pure butter, genuine
coffee, and liquors.

None of them ate much.  At 9:15 the sound of rotors beat against the
house.  The big helicoptor had arrived from Moscow.

Higher authorities took over.


The higher authority was a deputy minister, a man named V. Karper.

Karper was accompanied by two or three uniformed colonels, by an
engineer civilian, by a man from the headquarters of the Communist
Party of the Soviet Union, and by two doctors.

They dispensed with the courtesies.  Karper merely said, "You are
Cherpas.  I have met you.  You are Gausgofer.  I have seen your
reports.  You are Gauck."

The delegation went into Rogov's bedroom.  Karper snapped, "Wake him."

The military doctor who had given him sedatives said, "Comrade, you
mustn't--"

Karper cut him off.  "Shut up."  He turned to his own physician,
pointed at Rogov.  "Wake him up."

The doctor from Moscow talked briefly with the senior military doctor.
He too began shaking his head.  He gave Karper a disturbed look.
Karper guessed what he might hear.  He said, "Go ahead.  I know there
is some danger to the patient, but I've got to get back to Moscow with
a report."

The two doctors worked over Rogov.  One of them gave Rogov an
injection.  Then all of them stood back from the bed.

Rogov writhed in his bed.  He squirmed.  His eyes opened, but he did
not see the people.  With childishly clear and simple words Rogov began
to talk, "... that golden shape, the golden stairs, the music, take me
back to the music, I want to be with the music, I really am the
music..." and so on in an endless monotone.

Cherpas leaned over him so that her face was directly in his line of
vision.  "My darling!  My darling, wake up.  This is serious."

It was evident to all of them that Rogov did not hear her.

For the first time in many years Gauck took the initiative.  He spoke
directly to the man from Moscow.  "Comrade, may I make a suggestion?"

Karper looked at him.  Gauck nodded at Gausgofer.  "We were both sent
here by orders of Comrade Stalin.  She is senior.  She bears the
responsibility.  All I do is double check."

The deputy minister turned to Gausgofer.  Gausgofer had been staring at
Rogov on the bed; her blue, watery eyes were tearless and her face was
drawn into an expression of extreme tension.

Karper ignored that and said to her firmly; clearly, commandingly,
"What do you recommend?"

Gausgofer looked at him very directly and said in a measured voice, "I
do not think that the case is one of brain damage.  I believe that he
has obtained a communication which he must share with another human
being and that unless one of us follows him there may be no answer."

Karper barked: "Very well.  But what do we do?"

"Let _me_ follow--into the machine."

Anastasia Cherpas began to laugh slyly and frantically.  She seized
Karper's arm and pointed her finger at Gausgofer.  Karper stared at her.

Cherpas restrained her laughter and shouted at Karper, "The woman's
mad.  She has loved my husband for many years.  She has hated my
presence, and now she thinks that she can save him.  She thinks that
she can follow.  She thinks that he wants to communicate with her.
That's ridiculous.  I will go myself!"

Karper looked about.  He selected two of his staff and stepped over
into a corner of the room.  They could hear him talking, but they could
not distinguish the words.  After a conference of six or seven minutes
he returned.

"You people have been making serious security charges against each
other.  I find that one of our finest weapons, the mind of Rogov, is
damaged.  Rogov's not just a man.  He is a Soviet project."  Scorn
entered his voice.  "I find that the senior security officer, a
policewoman with a notable record, is charged by another Soviet
scientist with a silly infatuation.  I disregard such charges.  The
development of the Soviet State and the work of Soviet science cannot
be impeded by personalities.  Comrade Gausgofer will follow.  I am
acting tonight because my own staff physician says that Rogov may not
live and it is very important for us to find out just what has happened
to him and why."

He turned his baleful gaze on Cherpas.  "You will not protest, comrade.
Your mind is the property of the Russian State.  Your life and your
education have been paid for by the workers.  You cannot throw these
things away because of personal sentiment.  If there is anything to be
found, Comrade Gausgofer will find it for both of us."

The whole group of them went back into the laboratory.  The frightened
technicians were brought over from the barracks.  The lights were
turned on and the windows were closed.  The May wind had become chilly.

The needle was sterilized.  The electronic grids were warmed up.

Gausgofer's face was an impassive mask of triumph as she sat in the
receiving chair.  She smiled at Gauck as an attendant brought the soap
and the razor to shave clean a patch on her scalp.

Gauck did not smile back.  His black eyes stared at her.  He said
nothing.  He did nothing.  He watched.

Karper walked to and fro, glancing from time to time at the hasty but
orderly preparation of the experiment.

Anastasia Cherpas sat down at a laboratory table about five meters away
from the group.  She watched the back of Gausgofer's head as the needle
was lowered.  She buried her face in her hands.  Some of the others
thought they heard her weeping, but no one heeded Cherpas very much.
They were too intent on watching Gausgofer.

Gausgofer's face became red.  Perspiration poured down the flabby
cheeks.  Her fingers tightened on the arm of her chair.

Suddenly she shouted at them, "_That golden shape on the golden steps._"

She leaped to her feet, dragging the apparatus with her.

No one had expected this.  The chair fell to the floor.  The needle
holder, lifted from the floor, swung its weight sidewise.  The needle
twisted like a scythe in Gausgofer's brain.

The body of Gausgofer lay on the floor, surrounded by excited officials.

Karper was acute enough to look around at Cherpas.

She stood up from the laboratory table and walked toward him.  A thin
line of blood flowed down from her cheekbone.  Another line of blood
dripped down from a position on her cheek, one and a half centimers
forward of the opening of her left ear.

With tremendous composure, her face as white as fresh snow, she smiled
at him.  "I eavesdropped."

Karper said, "What?"

"I eavesdropped, eavesdropped," repeated Anastasia Cherpas.  "I found
out where my husband has gone.  It is not somewhere in this world.  It
is something hypnotic beyond all the limitations of our science.  We
have made a great gun, but the gun has fired upon us before we could
fire it.

"Project Telescope is finished.  You may try to get someone else to
finish it, but you will not."

Karper stared at her and then turned aside.

Gauck stood in his way.

"What do you want?"

"To tell you," said Gauck very softly, "to tell you, comrade deputy
minister, that Rogov is gone as she says he is gone, that she is
finished if she says she is finished, that all this is true.  I know."

Karper glared at him.  "How do you know?"

Gauck remained utterly impassive.  With superhuman assurance and calm
he said to Karper, "Comrade, I do not dispute the matter.  I know these
people, though I do not know their science.  Rogov is done for."

At last Karper believed him.

They all looked at Anastasia Cherpas, at her beautiful hair, her
determined blue eyes, and the two thin lines of blood.

Karper turned to her.  "What do we do now?"

For an answer she dropped to her knees and began sobbing, "No, no, not
Rogov!  No, no, not Rogov!"

And that was all that they could get out of her.  Gauck looked on.


_On the golden steps in the golden light, a golden shape danced a dream
beyond the limits of all imagination, danced and drew the music to
herself until a sigh of yearning, yearning which became a hope and a
torment, went through the hearts of living things on a thousand worlds._

_Edges of the golden scene faded raggedly and unevenly into black.  The
gold dimmed down to a pale gold-silver sheen and then to silver, last
of all to white.  The dancer who had been golden was now a forlorn
white-pink figure standing, quiet and fatigued, on the immense, white
steps.  The applause of a thousand worlds roared in upon her._

She looked blindly at them.  The dance had overwhelmed her, too.  Their
applause could mean nothing.  The dance was an end in itself.  She
would have to live, somehow, until she danced again.



END






[End of No, No, Not Rogov!, by Cordwainer Smith]
