"IN THE YEAR 1880, so far, there was no Trans-Siberian Railway to ride on.  Chained convict still trudged for months through seas of mud and bitter frost---into indefinite exile!"

Igor Pushkaryov looked up from his notebook to see how his words were being received.

"We'll use a montage of still photographs," he added.  Igor was a stocky man, with a crusty bread loaf that passed for his head.  A peak of close-cropped stubbly blond hair, rising above a pocked and sallow face, made it look as if his personal crust had split in the baking.

The sudden dark silhouette of some hungry bird beat against the great, drape-clad windows of the State Artists' Retreat, then darted away; and Igor stared down the hill as if a line of raggy prisoners might suddenly materialize from amidst the snowy larch trees.  But the steep valley remained unpopulated.  The blue wooden faces of the assorted dachas were all shuttered tight, and no cars move along the road, despite it having been recently snow-plowed.

What the hell had become of Dr. Bragin?   He should have been here ages ago.

"Patience, please," said Tisha Andropov.  "It won't do."

Being the presiding genius of the Nazarov Film Unit of Krasnoyarsk, Tisha was as passionate as Igor was ill-favored.  He could have been an aging womanizer had he not been slightly run to seed.  His dark wavy hair, worn rather long, was streaked with silver.  He kept a French battery-powered razor in the pocket of his Italian suit at all times and used it twice a day.  Once something of a coxcomb with the girls, for the past ten years he'd been busy sublimating his personal style into committed art.  Igor, in his dingier and more envious moments, pegged him as someone who'd gone to bed with so many young women that they had all melted together, eventually into one collective, sexless Muse which whispered, now, political endearments.  Put one way, he had matured.  Put another, he'd run out of his former power supply---and what a blessing that was.

Tisha slapped the side of the saggy armchair in which he was sprawling elegantly; the blow raised a cloud of dust and fiber.  Most of the furniture was equally ancient.

"No, that will not do at all!  That suggested the railway was built to get rid of people, not to open up Siberia as a positive step.  Kindly watch your nuances, sir!"  Not so many years ago, as they all knew, there had been many large labor camps in the vicinity of Krasnoyarsk....

"Surely, comrade, it is not politically incorrect to deny that the Tsar's government went in for nation-building."

"It is not.  But the fact remains that you're equating Siberia with exile.  Look, an underlying theme of our movie has to be how Siberia spelled space for development.  Although this didn't occur in a properly planned way till later on...And as a sub-theme, there could well be a hint that the Siberia of tomorrow's world will literally be in space.  As in outer space---the asteroid belt, the Jovian moon system!  Where a socialist's attitude is a plausible one; everyone pitching in, or else it's deadly.  We must not associate space with punishment."

In exasperation, Igor threw down his notebook on the disintegrating leather sofa, which he shared with Arthur Tolkachyov, the actor.

"I fail to see how we can dispense with the convicts!  Dammit all to hell, they're the reason why Delko crossed Siberia..."

"It's just the balance of words and images."

"...to visit the penal colony on Sakhalin!"

"You're the writer, Igor. Surely you can see that?"

"What are we talking about here?  Bloody Solaris?!  This isn't a science-fiction film!  It's a film about the writer Delko---in celebration of the anniversary of his epic journey, yes?  It's about a watershed in one artist's life..."

"One brought about by an act of social commitment.  Plus: the experience of launching himself out across space---inner space----far away from the hothouses of Moscow literary life.  Metaphor, see?  But we mustn't be 'arty,' however beautiful our intentions are.  This is a scientific film--first because of the kind of man Delko was, and second because we'll be using Dr. Bragin's hypnosis technique. Science is a sub-text for our film."

Actor Arthur Tolkachyov tossed his head back as if to indicate that all this had nothing to do with him.  A faint smile puckered the corner of his mouth; idly he inspected the shabby elegance of the room.

It had once been a reception room, for prior to becoming a rural appendage of the People's Palace of Culture in Krasnoyarsk, decades earlier, this Retreat had been the Summer home of some aristocratic exile who had been allowed to take his riches with him to Siberia.  The room had little connection with a present time that included the likelihood of colonizing outer space.  A worn oriental carpet covered most of the floor.  An antique mahogany table was dragged in oilskin.  Aspidistras sprouted from glazed terracotta pots. And the light bulbs hummed constantly as if electricity were just newly discovered and the secret consisted of imprisoning hot little devils in glass bottles.  Lampshades made of tasseled sallow-silk were stained by time and the heat of the light bulbs.  The room could have passed for a soundstage for some last-century drama.  How very appropriate!

Arthur straightened the right side of his mustache with his index finger.  It was a good mannerism.

"Really, comrades, all this business about a watershed!  I mean, those hills out there are watersheds---for a fact.  But old Eric was such a secretive chap.  I haven't the foggiest notion why he set off across Siberia."

"Come off it," said Igor. "We know a whole host of reasons."

"Well, that's just it, isn't it?  Which one tipped the balance?"

"There doesn't have to be a single reason, shining like a beacon.  There wouldn't be in one of his plays."

"Sure.  The main business of all the plays is sheer dither. Oh, what's to be done?  Oh, if only we could---but we can't.  There'll be Heaven on Earth in another hundred years.  Maybe.  But as for now, oh dear me, what's the point?"

"It is a hundred years later," Tisha reminded Arthur sharply.

Arthur tipped his head still further back; softly he laughed.

Despite himself, Tisha nodded in approval.  The Film Unit had discovered Arthur through a nationwide Delko Look-Alike Contest.  Arthur had been in repertory in Gorky, and he was endearingly second-rate.  Which was ideal.....

"Drive!" cried Igor.  "Nina runs off to go on the stage in The Seagull, doesn't she?  Duels get fought.  Revolvers pop off.  People do predict an earthly paradise of work, honesty, and goodwill....and they mean it.  People make wild declarations of passion."

"Which all boils down to nothing. And oh, those blessed revolvers!  After our Eric got back from Sakhalin, he always loaded them with blanks."

"Blanks? Why would he do such a thing?"

"Just look at how he revised The Wooden Devil. The second time around, Kolya just misses--at point-blank range.  So what exactly did wind our darling Eric up to that last notch so that he flew thousands of kilometers---whoops, pardon me, thousands of versts---clear across Siberia?  Did he do so to purge himself of hysteria?  The same hysteria that screws up his Medvedev, and makes the play Days in the LIfe a pretty piss-poor one."

"Medvedev's energies weren't being put to constructive use," said Tisha mildly.

"Are yours?" enquired Igor.

Tisha was about to squash this sally, but his aggrieved look changed to one of disbelief---for Arthur had pulled a pistol out of his jacket pocket.  He pointed it at the window.

"Bang," he said.

"For God's sake, man---!"

"How the Devil....!"

Arthur twirled the pistol around his finger, buckaroo style.

"It's just a prop I found in the lumber-room.  I found it, in fact, stuffed down one of those baskets.  So I thought to myself if old Eric had one in his pocket, so should I."

"Put that away, you fool!" bawled Igor.

"Yes, be a good comrade and get the bloody thing out of sight, please----before she gets back."  Now that the initial shock was over, Tisha seemed quite amused.

Arthur returned the gun to his pocket.  "We don't know anything for sure."

"We will once we make the movie," said Tisha.

At this moment, Diana Kotov came back into the room.  Opening her blue eyes wide in apologetic perplexity, she shook her head.

"I phoned the Psychiatric Institute, but Dr. Bragin hasn't been there..."

Arthur regarded those expressive eyes of hers with amusement.  It was a curious phenomenon, often noted by him, that our average Svetlana or Natasha tended to exaggerate her mannerisms in the presence of theatrical folk---as if she imagined that actors were in the business of pulling funny faces and were always on the lookout for some suitable facial tic to be immortalized.  "Look, 'Tasha, that's how I scratch my nose!  He's got me off to a tee."  Whereas men just as often repressed their affectations out of amour proper, not wishing to be parodied.

Arthur had seen this syndrome dozens of times; here it was again.  And Dr. Kotov was a psychiatrist, herself!"

"Maybe his taxi broke down---or skidded!" Diana sounded the alarm.

She was a chunky blonde with sensual lips and nostrils which would have been sensual, too, had nasal copulation been in vogue; perhaps she picked her nose in private.  By contrast, her knitted two-piece was severe: a double corset of woolen chain-mail.

She had left the double doors open. "Alex!" Tisha called out.  "Can we all have some more tea?"

An answering loud grunt from somewhere along the passage indicated that the caretaker had indeed heard the request.

Igor recovered his notebook and rifled through it.  "All right, let's try this:  On April 14 1880 Eric Delko left Moscow on a journey little short of heroic,  dad-di-dah---period photo of the station.  Some family and friends accompanied him as far as Yaroslavl.  Photo of Sidor in his stovepipe hat and dandy togs.  How about a photo of Sidor's mistress?"

"You'd have to show Galina Zarova's husband too," said Tisha.  "That could get complicated, yes?"

"Then we'll forget about her, in that case.  Of these friends, only the eccentric lady astronomer Ludmilla Degtyarova carried on as far as Perm.  Photo of a steamer on the Volga.  Or, perhaps, the Kama.

"Carried on?" Arthur flashed a quick wink at Diana.  "I would assume she did go to Perm, much to Eric's bewilderment.  Oh, didn't he understand the ladies beautifully in his art?  But in life, ah----maybe he understood them all too well."

Dr. Kotov made a great fuss of seating herself, on an overstuffed divan.  She plumped up and down, raising dust.

"In reality," Arthur went on slyly, "in his opinion Degtyarova at like a horse.  Chomp, chomp, chomp; a machine for chomping oats..."

"