Fifty-six, in the northeast, do you remember? My grandfather, my
father-reprisals. So, in Sixty, I come here, to the university. Sixty-two, my
best friend, my wifeтs brother. We were walking through a village market,
talking, then he stopped, he stopped talking, they had shot him. A kind of
mistake. Right? He was a musician. A realist. I felt that I owed it to him, that I
owed it to them, you see, to live carefully, with responsibility, to do the best I
could do. The best I could do was this," and he gestured around the
laboratory. "Iтm good at it. So I go on trying to be a realist. As far as possible,
under the circumstances, which have less and less to do with reality. But they
are only circumstances. Circumstances in which I do my work as carefully as I
can."
Avelin sat on the lab stool, his head bowed. When Fabbre was done,
he nodded. After a while, he said, "But I have to ask you if itтs realistic to
separate the circumstances, as you put it, from the work."
"About as realistic as separating the body from the mind," Fabbre said.
He stretched again and reseated himself at the computer. "I want to get this
series in," he said, and his hands went to the keyboard and his gaze to the
notes he was copying. After five or six minutes, he started the printer and
spoke without turning. "Youтre serious, Givan? You think itтs coming apart?"
"Yes. I think the experiment is over."
The printer scraped and screeched, and they raised their voices to be
heard.
"Here, you mean."
"Here and everywhere. They know it, down at Roukh Square. Go down
there. Youтll see. There could be such jubilation only at the death of a tyrant or
the failure of a great hope."
"Or both."
"Or both," Avelin agreed.
The paper jammed in the printer, and Fabbre opened the machine to
free it. His hand was shaking. Avelin, spruce and cool, hands behind his back,
strolled over, looked, reached in, disengaged the corner that was jamming the
feed.
"Soon," he said, "weтll have an IBM. A Mactoshin. Our heartsт desire."
"Macintosh," Fabbre said.
"Everything can be done in two seconds."
Fabbre restarted the printer and looked around. "Listen, the
principlesў
Avelinтs eyes shone strangely, as if full of tears; he shook his head.
"So much depends on the circumstances," he said.
