127
A LOVE THAT CREATES WORLDS
and it will create for us life on a lifeless planet. We will materialize again
and again. Our love…”
“Thank you for the beautiful dream, my love. With you… I will help you
give birth to life on the new planet.”
“My love, what shall we call the planet of our new life?”
“Yalmeza. Let that be called that.”
“Yalmeza, wait for us, and while you’re waiting, burst into bloom with
gardens, cover yourself with grasses, just as I wish,” the man pronounced,
confidently and passionately.
“And as I, too, wish,” she answered.
The hologram disappeared. Vladislav bowed to the audience and stepped
off to the side, ceding his spot to his friend and opponent Radomir.
Radomir took Vladislav’s spot, cast a glance over the audience and began
to speak:
“I must oppose my friend. And I’ll say straight away: there is much in his
theory that’s unproven and even contradictory. Like my friends, I can’t be-
lieve that this absolutely absurd period in the life of people existed.
“The hologram he showed, as we all understand, is the will of his thought,
of his imagination, and it demands confirmation. Although this hologram
did produce some kind of strange sensation in me. It seemed to me that my
friend took it from among stories we already know, only I can’t recall what
its source is.”
A murmur passed through the amphitheater, and exclamations were
heard:
“Could he really have plagiarized it? Unheard of!But perhaps the lecturer
didn’t know…”
“Plagiarism. I definitely had the feeling it was something I’d seen be-
fore.”
Vladislav lowered his head and stood off to the side. He winced when he
heard a child’s cry from the far rows of the seated people. “A-a-a…a-a-a-a.”
It was his irrepressible sister Ekaterinka shouting.
“It’s good that she’s just shouting and not commenting on what’s going
on,” thought Vladislav. But he was mistaken.
