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other hypothesis, even the most unlikely, is possible."
"A question for the chairman as a mathematician and astronomer. What
was the Russian mathematician Kolmogorov referring to when he said that upon
an encounter with extraterrestrial life we might even be unable to recognize
it? Isn't this a case?"
MacEdou replied without a smile.
"He undoubtedly had in mind questions that are sometimes asked at press
conferences."
There was again laughter in the hall and again the reporters,
sidestepping MacEdou, attacked from the flanks. The next victim was the
physicist Vierre, who had just taken a drink of whiskey and soda.
"Mr. Vierre, you are a specialist in elementary particle physics,
aren't you?"
"Let's say yes."
"Well, if the clouds are material, that means they consist of familiar
elementary particles, isn't that true?"
"I don't know, it might be otherwise."
"But most of the world we know consists of nucleons, electrons, and
quanta of radiation."
"And if we reside in the smaller part of the known world or of a world
that we do not know anything about? And suppose that world consists of
totally unknown particles that have no counterparts in our physics?"
The questioner was floored by the sudden supposition of Vierre. At this
point somebody else remembered me.
"Couldn't the cameraman Anokhin say what he thinks of the hit song of
his film in Paris?"
"I don't know it," I said, "and what is more I haven't even seen my
film in Paris."
"But it's been shown all over the world. In the Pleyaut Hall Ive Montan
sings it. In the United States, Pete Seeger. In London, the Beatles have a
version. Perhaps you've heard it in Moscow."
I could only shrug.
"But it was written by a Russian. Csavier only made the arrangement for
jazz." And then he rather musically sang the familiar words in French:
"the horsemen from nowhere...."
"I know," I cried out. "The author is a friend of mine, also a member
of the Antarctic expedition, Anatoly Dyachuk."
"Dichuk?" someone asked.
"Not Dichuk, but Dyachuk," I corrected. "Poet, scientist and composer.
..." I caught Zernov's ironic glance, but I paid no attention: here was
Tolya getting famous. I was tossing his name to the newspapers of Europe and
America and not fearing to be out of tune, I took it up in Russian, "The
horsemen from nowhere... What is it, a dream or a myth?..."
I was no longer singing alone, the whole hall had picked up the song,
some in French, others in English and still others without the words. When
everything quieted down, MacEdou delicately rang his bell.
"I think the conference is over, gentlemen," he said.
After the press conference we went to our rooms and agreed to meet in
an hour for dinner in the same restaurant. I was more tired after that
session than in some of the most exhausting Antarctic treks. Only a good
sleep could clarify my thoughts and bring me out of the dull apathy that I
was in. But sleep, the thing I most needed, wouldn't come no matter what I
did. I tossed from side to side on the couch. Finally, I got up, put my head
under the cold-water faucet and went to the restaurant to finish off the day
so loaded with impressions. But the day was not yet over, and impressions
were still to come. One of them passed fleetingly without attracting my
attention, though at first it appeared rather strange.
I was going down the staircase behind a man in a brown military
uniform. Wasn't it, with square shoulders? The grey whiskers and the crew
cut emphasized still more the military in him. Straight as a ramrod, he
passed the French doorman without turning his head, and then suddenly
stopped, turned and asked:
"Etienne?"
I got the impression -that the cold official eyes of the doorman
flashed a sign of real fear.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" he said with professional readiness.
I slowed down.
"Remember me?" the whiskered man asked smiling slightly.
"Yes, sir, I do," the Frenchman said in almost a whisper.
"That's good," the other replied, "it's good when people remember you."
And he went down to the restaurant. Purposely stamping hard on the
creaky steps, I went down the stairs, and with an innocent face asked the
doorman:
"You don't know that gentleman who just entered the restaurant, do
you?"
"No, Monsieur," replied the Frenchman looking me over with the same
indifference of the official. "A tourist from West Germany. If you want me
to, I can find out in the registry."
"No, no," I replied and went on, forgetting almost at once about what
had occurred.
"Yuri," said a familiar voice.
I turned around. There was Donald Martin coming towards me in an absurd
suede jacket and brightly coloured sports shirt with open collar.
He had been sitting alone at a long table drinking some kind of dark
brown beverage. He embraced me and the heavy odour of liquor hit me in the
face. But he wasn't drunk, the same old Martin, big bear-like and decisive.
This meeting somehow brought me back to the icy wastes of the Antarctic, to
the mystery of the rose clouds and the secret hope, warmed by Zernov's
words, that "you and I and Martin are labelled. They'll show us something
new yet. I'm afraid they will." Personally, I wasn't afraid. I was waiting.
We reminisced for only a short time before dinner was served. Zernov
and Irene appeared. Our end of the table livened up right away. We became so
noisy that a young lady and a little girl in glasses got up and went to the
far end of the table. The little girl put a thick book in a colourful
binding on the table; opposite them a kind looking provincial cure took a
seat. He looked at the girl and said. "What a little girl and already
wearing glasses!"
"She reads too much," her mother complained.
"And what's that you're reading?" asked the cure.
"Fairy tales," the girl answered.
"Which one do you like best?"
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin."
The cure was indignant: "You shouldn't let a child that age read
stories like that."
"What if she has a vivid imagination?"
"She'll have nightmares?"
"Oh, that's nothing," said the lady indifferently. "She'll read and
forget it."
Irene distracted me from the cure and the girl.
"Let's change places," she suggested. "I'd rather that guy over there
looked at my back."
I turned around and saw the man with the whiskers, the acquaintance-and
an unpleasant one it must have been-with whom the doorman decided not to
reveal. The whiskers were looking intently at Irene, too much so in fact.
"You have the luck," I grinned. "Another old acquaintance of yours?"
"The same as the lord in the office. Never seen him before."
At this point a journalist from Brussels took a seat near us. I had
seen him at the press conference. He had come here a week ago and knew
practically everyone.
"Who's that gentleman over there?" I asked him nodding in the direction
of the whiskers.
"Lange," said the Belgian screwing up a face. "Herman Lange from West
Germany. I think he has a law firm in Dusseldorf. An unpleasant character.
And next to him, not at the table d'hote, at the next table, do you see the
man with jerking face and hands? The famous Italian Carresi, film producer
and the husband of Violetta Cecci. She's not here right now, she's finishing
a film in Palermo. They say he got a smashing script for her in a new film.
Variations on historical themes, cloak and dagger stuff. Incidentally, the
man opposite him with the black eye-bank, he's a well-known figure too, in
the same line:
Gaston Mongeusseau, the first swordsman of France... ."
He continued to name celebrities around the hall, giving details that
we immediately forgot. It was only when the first dish was served that he
came to a halt. Then, no one knows why, everybody stopped talking. A strange
silence gripped the hall, one could hear only the clinking of knives and
forks on dishes. I looked at Irene. She too was eating in silence, rather
lazily, with half-open eyes.
"What's the matter?" I asked her.
"Want to sleep," she said, hiding a yawn, "and my head aches. I'm not
going to wait for the dessert."
She got up and left. Others followed. Zernov, after a few minutes of
silence, said that he too would probably leave to look over the materials of
his speech. Then the Belgian left. Soon the restaurant was practically
empty, only the waiters were still mooning about like sleepy flies.
"What's this desertion about?" I asked one of them.
"An unexplainable desire to sleep, Monsieur. Don't you feel that way
yourself? They say the atmospheric pressure has changed sharply. There'll
probably be a thunderstorm."
Then he too left, dragging his feet, practically asleep.
"Are you afraid of a thunderstorm?" I asked Martin.
"Not on the ground," he said laughing.
"Let's take a look around to see what Paris is like at night."
"What's happened to the light?" he asked suddenly.
It had grown dim all of a sudden and had taken on a mirky reddish hue.
"I can't make it out."
"The red fog of Sand City. D'you get my letter?"
"You think it's they again? Nonsense."
"They might have taken a dive down here."
"Is it at Paris as such or this hotel in particular?"
"Who knows?" Martin said with a sigh.
"Let's go out," I suggested.
When we passed the office of the doorman, I noticed that it was somehow
different from what it had been before. Everything had changed. The
draperies weren't the same, the lampshade in place of a chandelier, a mirror
that hadn't been there. I told Martin but he was unconcerned.
"Don't remember. You're thinking up things."
I looked at the doorman and was still more surprised. This was a new
man. Very much like the other one, but still not the same. Much younger, no
baldness and dressed in a striped apron he didn't have on before, as far as
I could remember. Maybe his son had taken over.
"Come on, come on," Martin called.
"Where you going, Monsieur?" the doorman stopped us. There was-or it
seemed to me-an ominous note in his voice.
"Does it make any difference to you?" I asked in English. Let him show
some respect, that's what 1 thought.
But he did not respond, he only said:
"Curfew, Monsieur. You can't go out. You run a risk."
"What's got into him, mad or what?" I said to Martin.
"The hell with him," Martin replied. "Come on."
And we went out into the street.
But we stopped stock still and reached out for each other so as not to
fall. The darkness was complete, no shadows, no light, only an even dense
ink-like darkness.
"What's this," Martin said hoarsely. "Paris without light?"
"Don't know what it is."
"Jesus, there's not a light, nothing."
"The power mains must have broken."
"No candles even, nothing!"
"Maybe it'd be better to go back, what do you think?"
"No," said Martin stubbornly, "I'm not giving up so soon, let's see
what's up."
"At what?"
Without answering, he went ahead. I followed holding on to his pocket.
Then we stopped. A star flashed high up in the black sky. Another flash shot
out to the left of us. I tried to catch the light and touched glass. We were
standing near a shop show-window. Without separating from Martin, and
drawing him along after me, I felt my way forward.
"This wasn't here before," I said stopping.
"What's that?" asked Martin.
"This show-window. And the shop too. Irene and I walked this way. There
was an iron fence. It's not here now."
"Wait a minute," Martin was apprehensive. It wasn't the fence or the
window that bothered him. He was listening.
In front of us something crashed a couple of times.
"Sounds like thunder," I said.
"More like a burst of submachine-gun fire," Martin objected.
"You sure?"
"You think I don't know the difference between thunder and gunfire?"
"I guess we ought to go back."
"Let's go on for a while. Maybe we'll meet somebody. Where the hell
have all the people of Paris gone to?"
"Listen, that's shooting. Who? Where?"
As if to confirm my words, the gun gave another burst. Then the noise
sank into that of an approaching car. Two beams of light bit into the
darkness, licked the stone pavement. I shuddered. Why stone pavement? Both
streets around our hotel just hours ago were asphalt.
Martin poked me in the dark suddenly and pressed me to the wall. A
truck with men in the back raced past us.
"Soldiers," said Martin/They're in uniform and helmets. With
submachine-guns."
"How did you find out?" I was surprised. "I didn't notice anything."
"Training."
"You know what," I thought out loud, "I don't think we're in Paris, and
the hotel is not ours, and the street's different too."
"That's what I've been telling you."
"What?"
"The red fog. Remember? They've dived in, that's definite."
At that moment somebody up above us opened a window. We could hear the
squeak of the frame and the shaking of a poorly nailed down window pane.
There was no light. But from the darkness over our heads, a hoarse squeaky
voice- typical of a French radio announcer-a radio was on the windowsill.
"Attention! Attention! You will now hear the report of the commandant
of the city. The two British pilots that landed by parachute from a plane
shot down are still hiding out in St. Disier.
In one quarter of an hour, the search will begin. Every block will be
combed, house by house. All men found in the house with the enemy
parachutists will be shot. Only immediate release of the hiding enemies will
halt this operation."
Something clicked in the radio and the voice died out.
"Get that?" I asked Martin.
"I guess so, they're looking for some kind of pilots.'"
"English."
"In Paris?"
"No, in some kind of St. Disier."
"They're going to shoot somebody?"
"All the men in the house where they find the parachutists."
"What for? Is France at war with England?"
"We must be delirious or under hypnosis, or asleep. Try pinching me."
Martin pinched me so hard I yelled out.
"Hey, don't yell, they'll take us for the English pilots."
"Listen, that's right," I said. "You're almost English. And a pilot
too. Let's go back, it isn't far from here."
I walked into the darkness and found myself in a brightly lit room.
Actually, only part of it was illuminated, like the corner of a film set
caught in the beam of a searchlight: the window was blacked out with a
drapery, the table was covered with a flowery oilcloth, there was an
enormous multicoloured parrot on a perch in a high wire cage, and an old
woman cleaning out the cage with a rag.
From behind I heard Martin whisper, "What's all this?"
"Haven't the slightest idea."
The old woman lifted her head and looked at us. In her yellow
parchment-like face, grey curls and prim Castilian shawl there was something
artificial, almost unreal, improbable. Nevertheless, she was a person and
her gimlet eyes seemed to screw into us with cold unkindness. The parrot too
was real and alive and switched round to look at us, his hooked beak
opening.
"Excuse-moi, madam," I began in my school-day French, "we got here
quite by accident. Your door must have been open."
"There's no door there," said the woman.
Her voice squeaked like the staircase of our hotel.
"How'd we get here then?"
"You're not French," she squeaked at us, without replying.
I shut up, stepped back into the darkness and bumped into a wall.
"There isn't any door, really," said Martin.
The old woman cackled.
"You speak English like Peggy."
"Do you speak English? Do you speak English?" that was the parrot.
I was thoroughly upset. It wasn't exactly fear, but some kind of spasm
gripping my throat. Who is mad? We or the city?
"Strange lighting you have here in the room," I said. "One can't see
the door. Where is it? We are going to leave, don't worry."
The old woman cackled again.
"You are the ones who are afraid, gentlemen. Why don't you want to
speak with Peggy? You can talk to her in English. They are afraid, Etienne,
they are afraid that you will give them away."
I looked around: the room had become lighter, it seemed, and broader.
Then I saw the other end of the table, at which our Parisian hotel doorman
sat, not the bald lord with the rumpled face but his younger counterpart
that met Martin and me in the uncannily altered hallway.
"Why should I give them away, mama?" he asked without even looking at
us.
"You have got to find the English pilots. You want to give them away.
You want to and you can t.
Young Etienne sighed loudly.
"I can't."
"Why?"
"I don't know where they are hiding."
"Find out."
"They don't trust me any more, mama."
"The main thing is that Lange should trust you. Give them the goods.
These guys speak English too."
"They're from another time. And they're not English. They came to a
congress."
"There are never any congresses in St. Disler."
"They're in Paris, mama. In the Hotel 'Homond'. Many years later. I am
already old."
"You are thirty years old now, and they are here."
"I know."
"Then give them over to Lange before the operation begins."
I didn't grasp what was happening, but a certain vague conjecture of
events broke through to my consciousness. Only there wasn't time to think
things out. I already knew that the events 'and people about us were by no
means illusory and that the danger indicated by their words and actions was
a real danger indeed.
"What are they talking about?" asked Martin.
I explained.
"This is wholesale madness. Who are they giving us over to?"
"The Gestapo, I think."
"You're mad too."
"No," I said as calmly as I could. "Look, we are now in a different
time period, in a different town, in another life. I do not know how and for
what purpose it has been modelled. Another thing I don't know is how we're
going to get out of here."
While we were talking, Etienne and the old woman were silent, switched
off, as it were.
"Werewolves!" Martin exploded. "We'll get out, I have experience in
things like this."
He went round the back of Etienne who was sitting at the table, grabbed
him by the lapels of his jacket and shook him up.
"Listen, you son of a .... Where's the exit? You're not going to play
any more tricks with us, you aren't."
"Where's the exit?" repeated the parrot after Martin. "Where are the
pilots?"
I shuddered. In a rage Martin threw Etienne to the side like a rag
doll. There, to the side, was something like a doorway, it was cloaked in a
reddish haze.
Martin jumped through and I followed. Situations cascaded like a moving
picture: into the dark, out of the dark. We were in the lobby of the hotel
that we had left some time before. Etienne, whom Martin had so ungentlemanly
rough-handled a minute ago, was writing something at his desk, and did not
look at us or simply didn't see us.
"Remarkable!" sighed Martin.
"How many more miracles," I added.
"This isn't our hotel."
"That's what I told you when we went out into the street."
"Come on, follow me."
"Okay, if you insist."
Martin rushed to the door and stopped: he was blocked by German
soldiers with submachine-guns, like in a film about the last war.
"We have to go out, into the street," Martin said pointing to the
darkness.
"Verboten!" the German shouted. "Zuruck!" and jabbed Martin in the
chest with his gun.
Martin stepped back, wiped his sweaty face. He was still boiling with
rage.
"Let's sit here for a minute," I said. "Let's talk things over. Lucky
they don't shoot at least. And there's no place to run to anyway."
We sat down at the round table covered with a dusty plush table cloth.
This was a very old hotel, probably older even than our Homond in Paris. It
had nothing any more to be proud of, either its ancient background or
traditions. Only dust, junk, and probably fear hidden in every object.
"What is happening?" asked Martin in a tired voice.
"I told you. This is another period and another life."
"I don't believe it."
"You don't believe that this life is real? And their guns too? Why,
they wouldn't think twice about riddling you with bullets."
"Another life," Martin repeated in growing rage. "All their models are
taken from originals. So where is this from?"
"I don't know."
Zernov emerged from the darkness that sliced off a part of the lighted
lobby. For a second I took him for a double. But then some kind of inner
conviction told me that he was real. He was calm, as if nothing had
occurred, and did not show any surprise or concern when he saw us. Of course
he must have been upset, he was simply holding himself in check. That was
the kind of person he was.
"Martin, if I'm not mistaken," he said approaching him and looking
around, "you're again in a city of upsidedowns. And we're with you."
"You know what city this is?" I asked.
"Must be Paris, not Moscow."
"It's neither. We're in St. Disier, to the southeast of Paris if I
recall my map properly. A provincial town, in occupied territory."
"Occupied by whom? There's no war now."
"You sure?"
"You're not delirious, are you, Anokhin?"
No. Zernov was magnificent in his imperturbability.
"I've already been delirious once, in the Antarctic," I remarked
pointedly. "We were delirious together. By the way, what year is it do you
think? Not in the Homond Hotel, but here in these damn mysteries?" And so as
not to puzzle him further, I added: "When did one hear 'Verboten' spoken in
France? Or when did German soldiers hunt for English parachutists?"
Zernov was still puzzled, he was trying to untangle things in his mind.
"I had already noticed the pink fog and the altered surroundings when I
went in your direction. But of course I never conjectured anything like
that." He turned round and saw German submachine-gun men frozen on the
borderline between light and darkness.
"Incidentally, they're alive," I sniggered. "And the guns they have are
real. Go up closer and they'll punch you in the belly with them and yell
'Zuruck'. Martin's already had that experience."
The familiar curiosity of the scientist sparkled in Zernov's eyes.
"What do you think is being modelled this time?"
"Somebody's past. Which doesn't make our plight any better. By the way,
where did you come from?"
"From my room. I got interested in the reddish light when I opened the
door and found myself here."
"Get ready for the worst," I said as I saw Lange.
Out of the beam of light stepped the lawyer from Dusseldorf, the one I
asked the Belgian about. The same Herman Lange with the mustachios and crew
cut, definitely him, only a bit taller, more elegant and younger by about a
quarter of a century. He had on a black uniform with the swastika, a tight
belt round his youthful wasp waist, the high German military cap and
brilliantly shined boots. He was definitely handsome, this polished Nibelung
from Himmler's elite.
"Etienne," he said softly, "You said there were two of them, I see
three."
Etienne jumped up, his face white as that of a powdered clown, and arms
straight down at full attention.
"The third one is from another time period, Herr Ob-berhaupt-excuse me,
Herr Sturmbahn-fiihrer."
Lange made a wry face.
"You can call me Monsieur Lange. I told you you could. Incidentally, I
know where he's from just like you do. Memory of the future. But he's here
now and that suits me. Congratulations, Etienne. And these two?"
"English pilots, Monsieur Lange."
"That's a lie," I said without getting up. "I'm Russian too, and my
comrade here is an American."
"Profession?" asked Lange in English.
"Pilot," Martin responded pulling himself up from habit.
"But not English," I added.
Lange replied with a bit-off laugh.
"What difference does it make, England or America? We're fighting both
of them."
For a moment I forgot about the danger that we were in, I wanted so
much to put this spectre of the past in his place. I didn't give thought to
the matter of whether he would understand me or not. I simply shouted:
"The war has been over for quite some time, Mr. Lange. We're all from
another time period and you too. Half an hour ago you and I and the others
were dining in the Homond Hotel of Paris, and you had on an ordinary
civilian suit, Mr. tourist lawyer, and not that shining theatrical affair."
Lange did not seem offended. On the contrary, he even laughed out loud,
and stepped into the crimson haze that was gathering.
"That's the way our nice Etienne recalls me. He idealizes me and
himself as well. Actually, things were quite different."
The dark red haze enveloped him completely and he melted out of view.
It took hardly half a minute. But from the fog there emerged a different
Lange, not so tall, rougher and thickset, in dirty boots and a long dark
coat-an exhausted martinet with bloodshot eyes from sleepless nights.
Holding his gloves in his hand he waved them as he approached Etienne's
little office.
"Where are they, Etienne? You still don't know?"
"They don't trust me any more, Monsieur Lange."
"Don't try to fool me. You're too prominent in the Resistance to be
under suspicion already.
Maybe later, but not now. You're simply afraid of your friends in the
movement."
He swung out and slapped the doorman's face with his gloves. And again
and again. Etienne only recoiled from the blows and pulled his head deeper
into his shoulders. His sweater bunched up on his back like the feathers of
a sparrow in the rain.
"You're going to be afraid of me more than your underground boys,"
Lange continued, pulling on his gloves and raising his voice. "You will,
won't you, Etienne?"
"Yes, sir, Monsieur Lange."
"Tomorrow at the latest find out where they're hiding. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir, it is, Monsieur Lange."
The Gestapo man turned round and again confronted us, transformed by
Etienne's fear from Nibelung into a man.
"Etienne did not keep his word because he really was under suspicion,"
he said. "But he tried his best, he wanted to betray them! He even betrayed
the woman he loved. And, oh, how sorry he was. Not that he had betrayed her
but that he couldn't get those two men that escaped. That's all right,
Etienne, we'll correct the past. We can. We'll shoot the Russian and the
American as escaped parachutists. The other Russian I'll simply hang. Now
get them all over to the Gestapo! 'Patrol!' " he called.
The whole dark dusty lobby filled up with German soldiers, or so it
seemed to me. I was surrounded, my hands were bound and I was kicked into
the darkness. I fell, hit my leg and couldn't get up for a long time, and my
eyes couldn't make anything out until they were used to the reddish
half-light that hardly at all was scattered by the rays of a tiny bulb. All
three of us were lying on the floor of a narrow cell with no window, but the
cell was moving, we were even tossed into the air and thrown to the side at
turnings in the route. 1 concluded that we must be in a closed car.
The first to get up was Martin. I flexed my injured leg and extended
it. Luckily there did not seem to be any broken bones. Zernov lay stretched
out on the floor with his head resting on his arms.
"You're not hurt, are you, Boris Arkadievich?"
"Nothing yet," he answered curtly.
"What's your explanation of this show?"
"Yea, a real film," he grinned bitterly, but did not want to continue
the conversation.
But I couldn't keep quiet.
"Somebody's past is being copied," I repeated. "We're in this past by
accident. But where did this police van come from?"
"It couldn't have been standing at the entrance. Maybe it brought the
submachine-gunners," Zernov ventured.
"Where are they?"
"They're probably in the cabin along with the driver. The rest are in
the hotel waiting for orders from Lange. They might have been needed at that
time too; he only slightly modified the past."
"You think this is his past?"
"What do you think?"
"Judging by our adventures before we met you, this is also the past of
Etienne. They are modifying one another. Only I don't grasp it: what's all
this for?"
"You people forgot me!" put in Martin. "I don't understand any
Russian."
"You're right, Martin," said Zernov, going over to English. "We did
forget you for a minute here. And that's something we shouldn't do, and not
only because of comradeship. We are bound in other ways too. You know what
I've been thinking about all along?" he continued rising on his elbow on the
muddy floor of the van. "Is what is happening accidental or not? I'm
thinking of your letter to Anokhin, Martin, in particular what you said
about us being labelled, that is, tagged by the cosmic newcomers. That's why
we get involved so readily in all their activities. Now, is that accidental
or is it not? Why wasn't some other routine plane flying the
Melbourn-Jakarta-Bombey line modelled. They picked on our TL' simply because
we were labelled. Is that an accident or isn't it? Suppose the 'clouds' get
interested in American countryside life on their way northwards. I believe
that's possible. Now why do they pick the town connected with Martin's life?
And precisely at a time when he had planned to visit it. Again, is it by
chance or not? And again, of all the cheap Parisian hotels, they pick on the
Homond for their next experiment. Why? There are people with an exciting
past in any hotel in Paris, practically in any house. The past of people in
contact with us is modelled. Why? Again, is that a matter of chance or not?
Might it not be prearranged, all done with a very specific purpose that is
still hidden from us?"
Zernov, it appeared to me, was wide of the mark. The unaccountable
happenings, the reality and illusory nature of these shifts in space and
time, the sick world of Kafka that had become our reality could freeze any
person with terror, yet I felt that we had not yet lost our self-control and
customary clarity of thought. Martin and I looked at one another in the
murky light of the van but did not say anything.
Zernov laughed.
"You think I'm off my rocker? Well, did you ever hear of Bohr's
hypothesis of craziness as a mark of the truth of a scientific hypothesis? I
don't lay any claims to the truth, I only suggest one of many possibilities.
But is this the contact that thinking people have in mind? Are not the
'clouds' striving to speak with human beings through us? Aren't they trying
to tell us what they are doing and why they are doing it? Maybe they are
allowing us to enter into their experiments so as to reach our intellect,
figuring that we will then be able to grasp the meaning of their
experiments."
"A queer type of communication," I said doubtfully.
"Suppose there isn't any other kind? They might not even be acquainted
with our means of communication. If they can't utilize optic, acoustic, or
any other means of transmitting information that we know of, what then? Let
us suppose they know nothing of telepathy, they don't know languages, the
Morse code or any other of our signal systems. On the other hand, we are
unfamiliar with their types of communication. What then?"
We were all thrown to the side as the van took another turn. Martin
crashed against me, and I pushed into Zernov.
"I don't get you guys," Martin said angrily, "they are creating,
modelling, seeking contact, and so we have to be hanged, shot and what not.
Somebody's nuts if you ask me."
"They might not know this. The first experiments and, of course,
mistakes." "Very comforting as we hang!" "I don't think we will," said
Zernov. I didn't have time to reply, the car shot upwards, the back broke
into two pieces and a brilliant flash of light with a terrible crash of
thunder that lasted a fraction of a second, then weightlessness and
darkness.
With great difficulty I opened my lead-heavy eyelids, and a fierce
piercing pain shot through the back of my head. High above me lights
twinkled like fire-flies in the night. Were they stars? Was this the sky? I
found the Big Dipper and realized I was out doors. It took me some time to
move my head, and with every slight movement a piercing pain responded in
the back of my head. Still I could make out the uneven blackness of the
houses on the opposite side of the street which was wet with rain. It
flickered in the darkness and I saw shadows in the middle of the street. A
closer look told me they were the remnants of our van. Dark, shapeless
pieces, asphalt broken and piled up, Or Were they bags of something a short
distance from me?
I was lying near the trunk of a tree that was barely distinguishable in
the darkness, I could even touch its old wrinkly bark. I pulled myself up
and got to a sitting position against the trunk. It became easier to breathe
and the pain subsided. I didn't feel it any longer if I didn't move my head.
My skull was intact I figured. I touched the back of my head and sniffed at
my fingers, the liquid was not blood but oil.
Overcoming my weakness I rose to my feet hanging on to the tree all the
while and continuing to peer into the empty darkness of the street. Finally,
I started to walk falteringly on shaking feet, and made my way to the wreck-
our van. "Boris Arkadievich! Martin!" I said softly. No answer. Finally I
went up to something shapeless, stretched out on the pavement. A closer
look.... It was half the body of a German in soldier's uniform. No feet, no
face. That was all that was left of our escort. A couple of steps away I
found a second body. He was hanging onto his gun with both hands, he was
lying spread-eagled in boots, no head. All that was left of our car was a
heap of fragments which in the dark looked like a crumpled newspaper. I went
round it and at the curb and found Martin.
I recognized him immediately by the short suede jacket and stove-pipe
trousers, no German soldiers ever wore them. I put my ear to his chest, it
was rhythmically rising and falling;
Martin was breathing. "Don!" I cried. He gave a jerk and whispered,
"Who's that?" "Are you alive, man?" "Yuri?" "Yes, it's me, can you get up?"
He nodded. I helped him to his feet and got him onto the curb. He was
breathing heavily and apparently had not yet got used to the darkness: his
eyes blinked. We sat there a couple of minutes and then he said:
"Where are we? I can't see anything, maybe I've gone blind?"
"Look at the sky. Do you see any stars?"
"Yea, I can see stars okay."
"No broken bones?"
"Don't think so. What's happened?"
"Somebody must have thrown a bomb at our car. Where's Zernov?"
"I don't know."
I got up and went around the remains of our wreck and took a good look
at the bodies of our escorts. Zernov was not there.
"The situation's bad," I said when I got back, "no sign of him."
"Were you looking at somebody?"
"Yes, the bodies of the guards. One has the head missing, the other's
without feet."
"We in the back got out alive, so he must have too. He's probably gone
some place."
"Without us? I don't think so."
"Maybe he returned?"
"Where to?"
"To real life. From this witch's wedding. He might be lucky, and we
might be too."
I gave a whistle.
"We'll get out," Martin said, "just wait, we're sure to get out."
"Be quiet, listen!"
A heavy door behind us squeaked slowly and then opened up. A beam of
bright light broke through and tore away the heavy drapery at the door. It
grew dark again, but the figure of a woman appeared in the flash of light.
She was dressed in black. All I could see now was a hazy shadow. Subdued
music was coming from beyond the door. A popular German waltz.
The woman, still almost indistinguishable in the dark, started down the
staircase. Only the narrow sidewalk separated her from us. We sat still.
"What's the trouble?" she asked. "Has something happened?"
"Nothing much," I replied. "Our car's blown up, that's all."
"Yours?" she asked in surprise.
"The one in which we were riding or in which we were being driven, to
be more precise."
"Who were you with?"
"Soldiers, an escort, naturally," I said a bit irritated.
"And that's all?"
"Do you want to collect the pieces?"
"Don't be angry. The chief of the Gestapo was supposed to be going by."
"Who? Lange?" I asked in surprise. "He's back there in the hotel."
"That's what was supposed to have happened," she said deep in thought.
"That's exactly the way it happened. They blew up an empty van, that's all.
Where are you from? Did Etienne think you people up too?"
"Nobody thought anybody up, Madame," I said. "We are here by accident
and not of our own free will. Excuse me, I do not speak French so well. It
is difficult for me to explain. Perhaps you know English?"
"English?" again surprise. "But how can...."
"I can't explain that to you even in English. What is more, I'm not
English anyway."
"Hello, ma'am," put in Martin, "but I'm from the States. You know the
song, Yankee Doodle was in hell ... and he says it's cool! Well, let me tell
you, ma'am, it's hotter in this hell."
She laughed.
"What shall I do with you?"
"I'd just as soon dampen my parched throat," said Martin.
"Follow me. There's nobody in the cloak-room and I've let the
hall-porter go. Your luck, Monsieur."
We followed her into a dimly lit cloak-room. The first thing I noticed
were the German army raincoats on the hangers and the high-crown officer
caps. Next to the cloak-room was a tiny closet-like affair without windows.
The walls were pasted over with sheets from film magazines. It accommodated
only two chairs and a table with a fat registry journal.
"Is this a hotel or a restaurant?" Martin asked the woman.
"The officer's casino."
For the first time I looked her straight in the face and was
dumbfounded, paralysed, speechless, like Lot's wife. She became tense,
cautious, on guard.
"You surprised? Do you happen to know me?"
Then Martin said: "This is interesting."
I was silent.
"What's all this mean, Monsieur?" the woman
"Irene," I said in Russian, "I don't get it." Why is Irene here, in
other peoples' dreams and in a dress of the forties?
"My god, he's Russian!" she exclaimed in Russian too.
"How did you get here?"
"Irene is my underground name. How do you happen to know it?"
"I don't know any underground names. I don't even know you have one.
The only thing I know is that an hour ago we were having. dinner in the
Hotel Homond in Paris."
"There's been some mistake," she said estranged and coldly.
I was boiling.
"You don't recognize me? Rub your eyes.' .
"Who are you anyway?"
I forgot about the dress of the forties and the surroundings brought to
life by alien recollections.
"Which one of us has gone mad? We came-from Moscow just a little while
ago. How could you have forgotten that?"
"When did we come?"
"Yesterday." I'm beginning to stutter.
"In what year?" This time I was so dumbfounded, my mouth just
opened-what could I say if she could ask a question like that?
"Don't be surprised, Yuri," Martin whispered behind me: he couldn't
understand anything but guessed what was exciting me so. "This is not she
but a werewolf."
She was still looking at me and Martin as total strangers.
"Memory of the future," she said mysteriously. "It may be that he
thought of that at some time. Perhaps he even met you and her. Looks like
me? And her name's Irene? Strange." "Why?" I couldn't contain myself.
"Because I had a daughter named Irene. In 1940 she was about a year old.
Osovets took her to Moscow, before the fall of Paris." "What Osovets? The
academician?" "No, just a scientist. He worked with Paul Langevin."
A spark shot through the darkness. That's the way it is sometimes, you
rack your brain over some problem and then all of a sudden you gain a
hypnotizing flash of a solution. "And what about you and your husband?" "My
husband left with the embassy for Vichy. He left later and alone. He stopped
at some farm along the way, the water in the radiator was boiling, or maybe
he simply wanted a drink of water. The roads were being bombed. That's all.
A direct hit ...." She smiled wistfully, probably used to it by now, she
smiled. "I smile this way because that is precisely the way Etienne imagines
me. Actually, it was terrible, awful."
Everything coincided. Osovets was not an academician yet at that time,
but he had worked with Langevin. That I knew. Obviously, he was the one who
had brought Irene up. And it was from him that she had learned about her
mother. And about the similarity too, probably. But what has Etienne got to
do with it all?
I couldn't but ask her about it. She laughed.
"The point is that I am his imagination. He is most likely thinking
about me right this minute. He was in love with me, head over heels in love.
And still and all he betrayed me."
I recalled the words of Lange: "He betrayed the woman he was
desperately, hopelessly in love with. He wanted to betray so much." So this
was before our encounter with the Gestapo. That means that in this life the
reference system of time was quite different. It was shuffled like cards in
a deck.
"Perhaps you want something to eat?" she suddenly asked in quite a
human way.
"I wouldn't refuse a drink," said Martin, guessing at what the topic of
conversation was.
She nodded, screwed up her eyes just like Irene and smiled. Even the
smiles were the same.
"Wait for me here, no one will come. But if they do.... You of course
haven't any weapons." She moved a board under the table and pulled out a
handgrenade and a small flat Browning. "It's not a toy, don't laugh, very
reliable, particularly at close range." She left. I took the Browning,
Martin the handgrenade.
"That's Irene's mother," I said.
"This is getting worse and worse, where'd she come from?"
"She says Etienne conjured her up. She was with him in the Resistance
during the war."
"Another werewolf," he said, and spat in disgust, "I'd like to heave
this grenade into the whole bunch of them." He slapped his pocket.
"Don't get excited. They're real human beings. People, not puppets.
This isn't Sand City."
"Human beings!" mocked Martin. "They know they are repeating somebody's
life, they even know the future of the life they are duplicating. This is
worse than 'Dracula'. D'ya ever see that film? About vampires. Dead in the
daytime, alive at night. That's human beings for you. I'm afraid that after
a night of happenings like that we'll need strait-jackets. If, of course,
they don't knock us out. I wonder what the papers would say. Killed by
visitors from the past life of Mr. Lange. Spectres with guns. Or something
like that."
"Hey, pipe down," I said, "we might be heard. It's not so bad yet.
We've even got guns. Maybe things will turn out all right."
Irene returned. I did not know her name and so, to myself, kept calling
her Irene.
"I can't bring drinks in here," she said, "we might be seen. Let's go
into the bar. They're all drunk in there, and two more guests will not mean
anything. The barman has been warned. But tell the American to keep quiet
and to answer all questions in French with 'Sore throat, can't speak."
What's your name? Martin. Repeat that, Martin, 'Sore throat, can't speak'."
Martin repeated the sentence in French a few times to get used to it.
She corrected him.
"Okey, that'll do. You'll be safe for half an hour for sure. In half an
hour Lange'll return with a miner and the submachine-gunners. There's an
inside staircase leading from the bar into an upper room where General Baire
is playing bridge. Under his table is a delayed-action mine, in forty-five
minutes the building will explode."
"Jesus Christ!" I yelled. "Let's get a move on then."
"It won't, don't get excited," she said sadly. "Etienne has reported
everything to Lange. I'll be caught upstairs in Baire's room, the miner will
"A question for the chairman as a mathematician and astronomer. What
was the Russian mathematician Kolmogorov referring to when he said that upon
an encounter with extraterrestrial life we might even be unable to recognize
it? Isn't this a case?"
MacEdou replied without a smile.
"He undoubtedly had in mind questions that are sometimes asked at press
conferences."
There was again laughter in the hall and again the reporters,
sidestepping MacEdou, attacked from the flanks. The next victim was the
physicist Vierre, who had just taken a drink of whiskey and soda.
"Mr. Vierre, you are a specialist in elementary particle physics,
aren't you?"
"Let's say yes."
"Well, if the clouds are material, that means they consist of familiar
elementary particles, isn't that true?"
"I don't know, it might be otherwise."
"But most of the world we know consists of nucleons, electrons, and
quanta of radiation."
"And if we reside in the smaller part of the known world or of a world
that we do not know anything about? And suppose that world consists of
totally unknown particles that have no counterparts in our physics?"
The questioner was floored by the sudden supposition of Vierre. At this
point somebody else remembered me.
"Couldn't the cameraman Anokhin say what he thinks of the hit song of
his film in Paris?"
"I don't know it," I said, "and what is more I haven't even seen my
film in Paris."
"But it's been shown all over the world. In the Pleyaut Hall Ive Montan
sings it. In the United States, Pete Seeger. In London, the Beatles have a
version. Perhaps you've heard it in Moscow."
I could only shrug.
"But it was written by a Russian. Csavier only made the arrangement for
jazz." And then he rather musically sang the familiar words in French:
"the horsemen from nowhere...."
"I know," I cried out. "The author is a friend of mine, also a member
of the Antarctic expedition, Anatoly Dyachuk."
"Dichuk?" someone asked.
"Not Dichuk, but Dyachuk," I corrected. "Poet, scientist and composer.
..." I caught Zernov's ironic glance, but I paid no attention: here was
Tolya getting famous. I was tossing his name to the newspapers of Europe and
America and not fearing to be out of tune, I took it up in Russian, "The
horsemen from nowhere... What is it, a dream or a myth?..."
I was no longer singing alone, the whole hall had picked up the song,
some in French, others in English and still others without the words. When
everything quieted down, MacEdou delicately rang his bell.
"I think the conference is over, gentlemen," he said.
After the press conference we went to our rooms and agreed to meet in
an hour for dinner in the same restaurant. I was more tired after that
session than in some of the most exhausting Antarctic treks. Only a good
sleep could clarify my thoughts and bring me out of the dull apathy that I
was in. But sleep, the thing I most needed, wouldn't come no matter what I
did. I tossed from side to side on the couch. Finally, I got up, put my head
under the cold-water faucet and went to the restaurant to finish off the day
so loaded with impressions. But the day was not yet over, and impressions
were still to come. One of them passed fleetingly without attracting my
attention, though at first it appeared rather strange.
I was going down the staircase behind a man in a brown military
uniform. Wasn't it, with square shoulders? The grey whiskers and the crew
cut emphasized still more the military in him. Straight as a ramrod, he
passed the French doorman without turning his head, and then suddenly
stopped, turned and asked:
"Etienne?"
I got the impression -that the cold official eyes of the doorman
flashed a sign of real fear.
"I beg your pardon, sir?" he said with professional readiness.
I slowed down.
"Remember me?" the whiskered man asked smiling slightly.
"Yes, sir, I do," the Frenchman said in almost a whisper.
"That's good," the other replied, "it's good when people remember you."
And he went down to the restaurant. Purposely stamping hard on the
creaky steps, I went down the stairs, and with an innocent face asked the
doorman:
"You don't know that gentleman who just entered the restaurant, do
you?"
"No, Monsieur," replied the Frenchman looking me over with the same
indifference of the official. "A tourist from West Germany. If you want me
to, I can find out in the registry."
"No, no," I replied and went on, forgetting almost at once about what
had occurred.
"Yuri," said a familiar voice.
I turned around. There was Donald Martin coming towards me in an absurd
suede jacket and brightly coloured sports shirt with open collar.
He had been sitting alone at a long table drinking some kind of dark
brown beverage. He embraced me and the heavy odour of liquor hit me in the
face. But he wasn't drunk, the same old Martin, big bear-like and decisive.
This meeting somehow brought me back to the icy wastes of the Antarctic, to
the mystery of the rose clouds and the secret hope, warmed by Zernov's
words, that "you and I and Martin are labelled. They'll show us something
new yet. I'm afraid they will." Personally, I wasn't afraid. I was waiting.
We reminisced for only a short time before dinner was served. Zernov
and Irene appeared. Our end of the table livened up right away. We became so
noisy that a young lady and a little girl in glasses got up and went to the
far end of the table. The little girl put a thick book in a colourful
binding on the table; opposite them a kind looking provincial cure took a
seat. He looked at the girl and said. "What a little girl and already
wearing glasses!"
"She reads too much," her mother complained.
"And what's that you're reading?" asked the cure.
"Fairy tales," the girl answered.
"Which one do you like best?"
"The Pied Piper of Hamelin."
The cure was indignant: "You shouldn't let a child that age read
stories like that."
"What if she has a vivid imagination?"
"She'll have nightmares?"
"Oh, that's nothing," said the lady indifferently. "She'll read and
forget it."
Irene distracted me from the cure and the girl.
"Let's change places," she suggested. "I'd rather that guy over there
looked at my back."
I turned around and saw the man with the whiskers, the acquaintance-and
an unpleasant one it must have been-with whom the doorman decided not to
reveal. The whiskers were looking intently at Irene, too much so in fact.
"You have the luck," I grinned. "Another old acquaintance of yours?"
"The same as the lord in the office. Never seen him before."
At this point a journalist from Brussels took a seat near us. I had
seen him at the press conference. He had come here a week ago and knew
practically everyone.
"Who's that gentleman over there?" I asked him nodding in the direction
of the whiskers.
"Lange," said the Belgian screwing up a face. "Herman Lange from West
Germany. I think he has a law firm in Dusseldorf. An unpleasant character.
And next to him, not at the table d'hote, at the next table, do you see the
man with jerking face and hands? The famous Italian Carresi, film producer
and the husband of Violetta Cecci. She's not here right now, she's finishing
a film in Palermo. They say he got a smashing script for her in a new film.
Variations on historical themes, cloak and dagger stuff. Incidentally, the
man opposite him with the black eye-bank, he's a well-known figure too, in
the same line:
Gaston Mongeusseau, the first swordsman of France... ."
He continued to name celebrities around the hall, giving details that
we immediately forgot. It was only when the first dish was served that he
came to a halt. Then, no one knows why, everybody stopped talking. A strange
silence gripped the hall, one could hear only the clinking of knives and
forks on dishes. I looked at Irene. She too was eating in silence, rather
lazily, with half-open eyes.
"What's the matter?" I asked her.
"Want to sleep," she said, hiding a yawn, "and my head aches. I'm not
going to wait for the dessert."
She got up and left. Others followed. Zernov, after a few minutes of
silence, said that he too would probably leave to look over the materials of
his speech. Then the Belgian left. Soon the restaurant was practically
empty, only the waiters were still mooning about like sleepy flies.
"What's this desertion about?" I asked one of them.
"An unexplainable desire to sleep, Monsieur. Don't you feel that way
yourself? They say the atmospheric pressure has changed sharply. There'll
probably be a thunderstorm."
Then he too left, dragging his feet, practically asleep.
"Are you afraid of a thunderstorm?" I asked Martin.
"Not on the ground," he said laughing.
"Let's take a look around to see what Paris is like at night."
"What's happened to the light?" he asked suddenly.
It had grown dim all of a sudden and had taken on a mirky reddish hue.
"I can't make it out."
"The red fog of Sand City. D'you get my letter?"
"You think it's they again? Nonsense."
"They might have taken a dive down here."
"Is it at Paris as such or this hotel in particular?"
"Who knows?" Martin said with a sigh.
"Let's go out," I suggested.
When we passed the office of the doorman, I noticed that it was somehow
different from what it had been before. Everything had changed. The
draperies weren't the same, the lampshade in place of a chandelier, a mirror
that hadn't been there. I told Martin but he was unconcerned.
"Don't remember. You're thinking up things."
I looked at the doorman and was still more surprised. This was a new
man. Very much like the other one, but still not the same. Much younger, no
baldness and dressed in a striped apron he didn't have on before, as far as
I could remember. Maybe his son had taken over.
"Come on, come on," Martin called.
"Where you going, Monsieur?" the doorman stopped us. There was-or it
seemed to me-an ominous note in his voice.
"Does it make any difference to you?" I asked in English. Let him show
some respect, that's what 1 thought.
But he did not respond, he only said:
"Curfew, Monsieur. You can't go out. You run a risk."
"What's got into him, mad or what?" I said to Martin.
"The hell with him," Martin replied. "Come on."
And we went out into the street.
But we stopped stock still and reached out for each other so as not to
fall. The darkness was complete, no shadows, no light, only an even dense
ink-like darkness.
"What's this," Martin said hoarsely. "Paris without light?"
"Don't know what it is."
"Jesus, there's not a light, nothing."
"The power mains must have broken."
"No candles even, nothing!"
"Maybe it'd be better to go back, what do you think?"
"No," said Martin stubbornly, "I'm not giving up so soon, let's see
what's up."
"At what?"
Without answering, he went ahead. I followed holding on to his pocket.
Then we stopped. A star flashed high up in the black sky. Another flash shot
out to the left of us. I tried to catch the light and touched glass. We were
standing near a shop show-window. Without separating from Martin, and
drawing him along after me, I felt my way forward.
"This wasn't here before," I said stopping.
"What's that?" asked Martin.
"This show-window. And the shop too. Irene and I walked this way. There
was an iron fence. It's not here now."
"Wait a minute," Martin was apprehensive. It wasn't the fence or the
window that bothered him. He was listening.
In front of us something crashed a couple of times.
"Sounds like thunder," I said.
"More like a burst of submachine-gun fire," Martin objected.
"You sure?"
"You think I don't know the difference between thunder and gunfire?"
"I guess we ought to go back."
"Let's go on for a while. Maybe we'll meet somebody. Where the hell
have all the people of Paris gone to?"
"Listen, that's shooting. Who? Where?"
As if to confirm my words, the gun gave another burst. Then the noise
sank into that of an approaching car. Two beams of light bit into the
darkness, licked the stone pavement. I shuddered. Why stone pavement? Both
streets around our hotel just hours ago were asphalt.
Martin poked me in the dark suddenly and pressed me to the wall. A
truck with men in the back raced past us.
"Soldiers," said Martin/They're in uniform and helmets. With
submachine-guns."
"How did you find out?" I was surprised. "I didn't notice anything."
"Training."
"You know what," I thought out loud, "I don't think we're in Paris, and
the hotel is not ours, and the street's different too."
"That's what I've been telling you."
"What?"
"The red fog. Remember? They've dived in, that's definite."
At that moment somebody up above us opened a window. We could hear the
squeak of the frame and the shaking of a poorly nailed down window pane.
There was no light. But from the darkness over our heads, a hoarse squeaky
voice- typical of a French radio announcer-a radio was on the windowsill.
"Attention! Attention! You will now hear the report of the commandant
of the city. The two British pilots that landed by parachute from a plane
shot down are still hiding out in St. Disier.
In one quarter of an hour, the search will begin. Every block will be
combed, house by house. All men found in the house with the enemy
parachutists will be shot. Only immediate release of the hiding enemies will
halt this operation."
Something clicked in the radio and the voice died out.
"Get that?" I asked Martin.
"I guess so, they're looking for some kind of pilots.'"
"English."
"In Paris?"
"No, in some kind of St. Disier."
"They're going to shoot somebody?"
"All the men in the house where they find the parachutists."
"What for? Is France at war with England?"
"We must be delirious or under hypnosis, or asleep. Try pinching me."
Martin pinched me so hard I yelled out.
"Hey, don't yell, they'll take us for the English pilots."
"Listen, that's right," I said. "You're almost English. And a pilot
too. Let's go back, it isn't far from here."
I walked into the darkness and found myself in a brightly lit room.
Actually, only part of it was illuminated, like the corner of a film set
caught in the beam of a searchlight: the window was blacked out with a
drapery, the table was covered with a flowery oilcloth, there was an
enormous multicoloured parrot on a perch in a high wire cage, and an old
woman cleaning out the cage with a rag.
From behind I heard Martin whisper, "What's all this?"
"Haven't the slightest idea."
The old woman lifted her head and looked at us. In her yellow
parchment-like face, grey curls and prim Castilian shawl there was something
artificial, almost unreal, improbable. Nevertheless, she was a person and
her gimlet eyes seemed to screw into us with cold unkindness. The parrot too
was real and alive and switched round to look at us, his hooked beak
opening.
"Excuse-moi, madam," I began in my school-day French, "we got here
quite by accident. Your door must have been open."
"There's no door there," said the woman.
Her voice squeaked like the staircase of our hotel.
"How'd we get here then?"
"You're not French," she squeaked at us, without replying.
I shut up, stepped back into the darkness and bumped into a wall.
"There isn't any door, really," said Martin.
The old woman cackled.
"You speak English like Peggy."
"Do you speak English? Do you speak English?" that was the parrot.
I was thoroughly upset. It wasn't exactly fear, but some kind of spasm
gripping my throat. Who is mad? We or the city?
"Strange lighting you have here in the room," I said. "One can't see
the door. Where is it? We are going to leave, don't worry."
The old woman cackled again.
"You are the ones who are afraid, gentlemen. Why don't you want to
speak with Peggy? You can talk to her in English. They are afraid, Etienne,
they are afraid that you will give them away."
I looked around: the room had become lighter, it seemed, and broader.
Then I saw the other end of the table, at which our Parisian hotel doorman
sat, not the bald lord with the rumpled face but his younger counterpart
that met Martin and me in the uncannily altered hallway.
"Why should I give them away, mama?" he asked without even looking at
us.
"You have got to find the English pilots. You want to give them away.
You want to and you can t.
Young Etienne sighed loudly.
"I can't."
"Why?"
"I don't know where they are hiding."
"Find out."
"They don't trust me any more, mama."
"The main thing is that Lange should trust you. Give them the goods.
These guys speak English too."
"They're from another time. And they're not English. They came to a
congress."
"There are never any congresses in St. Disler."
"They're in Paris, mama. In the Hotel 'Homond'. Many years later. I am
already old."
"You are thirty years old now, and they are here."
"I know."
"Then give them over to Lange before the operation begins."
I didn't grasp what was happening, but a certain vague conjecture of
events broke through to my consciousness. Only there wasn't time to think
things out. I already knew that the events 'and people about us were by no
means illusory and that the danger indicated by their words and actions was
a real danger indeed.
"What are they talking about?" asked Martin.
I explained.
"This is wholesale madness. Who are they giving us over to?"
"The Gestapo, I think."
"You're mad too."
"No," I said as calmly as I could. "Look, we are now in a different
time period, in a different town, in another life. I do not know how and for
what purpose it has been modelled. Another thing I don't know is how we're
going to get out of here."
While we were talking, Etienne and the old woman were silent, switched
off, as it were.
"Werewolves!" Martin exploded. "We'll get out, I have experience in
things like this."
He went round the back of Etienne who was sitting at the table, grabbed
him by the lapels of his jacket and shook him up.
"Listen, you son of a .... Where's the exit? You're not going to play
any more tricks with us, you aren't."
"Where's the exit?" repeated the parrot after Martin. "Where are the
pilots?"
I shuddered. In a rage Martin threw Etienne to the side like a rag
doll. There, to the side, was something like a doorway, it was cloaked in a
reddish haze.
Martin jumped through and I followed. Situations cascaded like a moving
picture: into the dark, out of the dark. We were in the lobby of the hotel
that we had left some time before. Etienne, whom Martin had so ungentlemanly
rough-handled a minute ago, was writing something at his desk, and did not
look at us or simply didn't see us.
"Remarkable!" sighed Martin.
"How many more miracles," I added.
"This isn't our hotel."
"That's what I told you when we went out into the street."
"Come on, follow me."
"Okay, if you insist."
Martin rushed to the door and stopped: he was blocked by German
soldiers with submachine-guns, like in a film about the last war.
"We have to go out, into the street," Martin said pointing to the
darkness.
"Verboten!" the German shouted. "Zuruck!" and jabbed Martin in the
chest with his gun.
Martin stepped back, wiped his sweaty face. He was still boiling with
rage.
"Let's sit here for a minute," I said. "Let's talk things over. Lucky
they don't shoot at least. And there's no place to run to anyway."
We sat down at the round table covered with a dusty plush table cloth.
This was a very old hotel, probably older even than our Homond in Paris. It
had nothing any more to be proud of, either its ancient background or
traditions. Only dust, junk, and probably fear hidden in every object.
"What is happening?" asked Martin in a tired voice.
"I told you. This is another period and another life."
"I don't believe it."
"You don't believe that this life is real? And their guns too? Why,
they wouldn't think twice about riddling you with bullets."
"Another life," Martin repeated in growing rage. "All their models are
taken from originals. So where is this from?"
"I don't know."
Zernov emerged from the darkness that sliced off a part of the lighted
lobby. For a second I took him for a double. But then some kind of inner
conviction told me that he was real. He was calm, as if nothing had
occurred, and did not show any surprise or concern when he saw us. Of course
he must have been upset, he was simply holding himself in check. That was
the kind of person he was.
"Martin, if I'm not mistaken," he said approaching him and looking
around, "you're again in a city of upsidedowns. And we're with you."
"You know what city this is?" I asked.
"Must be Paris, not Moscow."
"It's neither. We're in St. Disier, to the southeast of Paris if I
recall my map properly. A provincial town, in occupied territory."
"Occupied by whom? There's no war now."
"You sure?"
"You're not delirious, are you, Anokhin?"
No. Zernov was magnificent in his imperturbability.
"I've already been delirious once, in the Antarctic," I remarked
pointedly. "We were delirious together. By the way, what year is it do you
think? Not in the Homond Hotel, but here in these damn mysteries?" And so as
not to puzzle him further, I added: "When did one hear 'Verboten' spoken in
France? Or when did German soldiers hunt for English parachutists?"
Zernov was still puzzled, he was trying to untangle things in his mind.
"I had already noticed the pink fog and the altered surroundings when I
went in your direction. But of course I never conjectured anything like
that." He turned round and saw German submachine-gun men frozen on the
borderline between light and darkness.
"Incidentally, they're alive," I sniggered. "And the guns they have are
real. Go up closer and they'll punch you in the belly with them and yell
'Zuruck'. Martin's already had that experience."
The familiar curiosity of the scientist sparkled in Zernov's eyes.
"What do you think is being modelled this time?"
"Somebody's past. Which doesn't make our plight any better. By the way,
where did you come from?"
"From my room. I got interested in the reddish light when I opened the
door and found myself here."
"Get ready for the worst," I said as I saw Lange.
Out of the beam of light stepped the lawyer from Dusseldorf, the one I
asked the Belgian about. The same Herman Lange with the mustachios and crew
cut, definitely him, only a bit taller, more elegant and younger by about a
quarter of a century. He had on a black uniform with the swastika, a tight
belt round his youthful wasp waist, the high German military cap and
brilliantly shined boots. He was definitely handsome, this polished Nibelung
from Himmler's elite.
"Etienne," he said softly, "You said there were two of them, I see
three."
Etienne jumped up, his face white as that of a powdered clown, and arms
straight down at full attention.
"The third one is from another time period, Herr Ob-berhaupt-excuse me,
Herr Sturmbahn-fiihrer."
Lange made a wry face.
"You can call me Monsieur Lange. I told you you could. Incidentally, I
know where he's from just like you do. Memory of the future. But he's here
now and that suits me. Congratulations, Etienne. And these two?"
"English pilots, Monsieur Lange."
"That's a lie," I said without getting up. "I'm Russian too, and my
comrade here is an American."
"Profession?" asked Lange in English.
"Pilot," Martin responded pulling himself up from habit.
"But not English," I added.
Lange replied with a bit-off laugh.
"What difference does it make, England or America? We're fighting both
of them."
For a moment I forgot about the danger that we were in, I wanted so
much to put this spectre of the past in his place. I didn't give thought to
the matter of whether he would understand me or not. I simply shouted:
"The war has been over for quite some time, Mr. Lange. We're all from
another time period and you too. Half an hour ago you and I and the others
were dining in the Homond Hotel of Paris, and you had on an ordinary
civilian suit, Mr. tourist lawyer, and not that shining theatrical affair."
Lange did not seem offended. On the contrary, he even laughed out loud,
and stepped into the crimson haze that was gathering.
"That's the way our nice Etienne recalls me. He idealizes me and
himself as well. Actually, things were quite different."
The dark red haze enveloped him completely and he melted out of view.
It took hardly half a minute. But from the fog there emerged a different
Lange, not so tall, rougher and thickset, in dirty boots and a long dark
coat-an exhausted martinet with bloodshot eyes from sleepless nights.
Holding his gloves in his hand he waved them as he approached Etienne's
little office.
"Where are they, Etienne? You still don't know?"
"They don't trust me any more, Monsieur Lange."
"Don't try to fool me. You're too prominent in the Resistance to be
under suspicion already.
Maybe later, but not now. You're simply afraid of your friends in the
movement."
He swung out and slapped the doorman's face with his gloves. And again
and again. Etienne only recoiled from the blows and pulled his head deeper
into his shoulders. His sweater bunched up on his back like the feathers of
a sparrow in the rain.
"You're going to be afraid of me more than your underground boys,"
Lange continued, pulling on his gloves and raising his voice. "You will,
won't you, Etienne?"
"Yes, sir, Monsieur Lange."
"Tomorrow at the latest find out where they're hiding. Is that clear?"
"Yes, sir, it is, Monsieur Lange."
The Gestapo man turned round and again confronted us, transformed by
Etienne's fear from Nibelung into a man.
"Etienne did not keep his word because he really was under suspicion,"
he said. "But he tried his best, he wanted to betray them! He even betrayed
the woman he loved. And, oh, how sorry he was. Not that he had betrayed her
but that he couldn't get those two men that escaped. That's all right,
Etienne, we'll correct the past. We can. We'll shoot the Russian and the
American as escaped parachutists. The other Russian I'll simply hang. Now
get them all over to the Gestapo! 'Patrol!' " he called.
The whole dark dusty lobby filled up with German soldiers, or so it
seemed to me. I was surrounded, my hands were bound and I was kicked into
the darkness. I fell, hit my leg and couldn't get up for a long time, and my
eyes couldn't make anything out until they were used to the reddish
half-light that hardly at all was scattered by the rays of a tiny bulb. All
three of us were lying on the floor of a narrow cell with no window, but the
cell was moving, we were even tossed into the air and thrown to the side at
turnings in the route. 1 concluded that we must be in a closed car.
The first to get up was Martin. I flexed my injured leg and extended
it. Luckily there did not seem to be any broken bones. Zernov lay stretched
out on the floor with his head resting on his arms.
"You're not hurt, are you, Boris Arkadievich?"
"Nothing yet," he answered curtly.
"What's your explanation of this show?"
"Yea, a real film," he grinned bitterly, but did not want to continue
the conversation.
But I couldn't keep quiet.
"Somebody's past is being copied," I repeated. "We're in this past by
accident. But where did this police van come from?"
"It couldn't have been standing at the entrance. Maybe it brought the
submachine-gunners," Zernov ventured.
"Where are they?"
"They're probably in the cabin along with the driver. The rest are in
the hotel waiting for orders from Lange. They might have been needed at that
time too; he only slightly modified the past."
"You think this is his past?"
"What do you think?"
"Judging by our adventures before we met you, this is also the past of
Etienne. They are modifying one another. Only I don't grasp it: what's all
this for?"
"You people forgot me!" put in Martin. "I don't understand any
Russian."
"You're right, Martin," said Zernov, going over to English. "We did
forget you for a minute here. And that's something we shouldn't do, and not
only because of comradeship. We are bound in other ways too. You know what
I've been thinking about all along?" he continued rising on his elbow on the
muddy floor of the van. "Is what is happening accidental or not? I'm
thinking of your letter to Anokhin, Martin, in particular what you said
about us being labelled, that is, tagged by the cosmic newcomers. That's why
we get involved so readily in all their activities. Now, is that accidental
or is it not? Why wasn't some other routine plane flying the
Melbourn-Jakarta-Bombey line modelled. They picked on our TL' simply because
we were labelled. Is that an accident or isn't it? Suppose the 'clouds' get
interested in American countryside life on their way northwards. I believe
that's possible. Now why do they pick the town connected with Martin's life?
And precisely at a time when he had planned to visit it. Again, is it by
chance or not? And again, of all the cheap Parisian hotels, they pick on the
Homond for their next experiment. Why? There are people with an exciting
past in any hotel in Paris, practically in any house. The past of people in
contact with us is modelled. Why? Again, is that a matter of chance or not?
Might it not be prearranged, all done with a very specific purpose that is
still hidden from us?"
Zernov, it appeared to me, was wide of the mark. The unaccountable
happenings, the reality and illusory nature of these shifts in space and
time, the sick world of Kafka that had become our reality could freeze any
person with terror, yet I felt that we had not yet lost our self-control and
customary clarity of thought. Martin and I looked at one another in the
murky light of the van but did not say anything.
Zernov laughed.
"You think I'm off my rocker? Well, did you ever hear of Bohr's
hypothesis of craziness as a mark of the truth of a scientific hypothesis? I
don't lay any claims to the truth, I only suggest one of many possibilities.
But is this the contact that thinking people have in mind? Are not the
'clouds' striving to speak with human beings through us? Aren't they trying
to tell us what they are doing and why they are doing it? Maybe they are
allowing us to enter into their experiments so as to reach our intellect,
figuring that we will then be able to grasp the meaning of their
experiments."
"A queer type of communication," I said doubtfully.
"Suppose there isn't any other kind? They might not even be acquainted
with our means of communication. If they can't utilize optic, acoustic, or
any other means of transmitting information that we know of, what then? Let
us suppose they know nothing of telepathy, they don't know languages, the
Morse code or any other of our signal systems. On the other hand, we are
unfamiliar with their types of communication. What then?"
We were all thrown to the side as the van took another turn. Martin
crashed against me, and I pushed into Zernov.
"I don't get you guys," Martin said angrily, "they are creating,
modelling, seeking contact, and so we have to be hanged, shot and what not.
Somebody's nuts if you ask me."
"They might not know this. The first experiments and, of course,
mistakes." "Very comforting as we hang!" "I don't think we will," said
Zernov. I didn't have time to reply, the car shot upwards, the back broke
into two pieces and a brilliant flash of light with a terrible crash of
thunder that lasted a fraction of a second, then weightlessness and
darkness.
With great difficulty I opened my lead-heavy eyelids, and a fierce
piercing pain shot through the back of my head. High above me lights
twinkled like fire-flies in the night. Were they stars? Was this the sky? I
found the Big Dipper and realized I was out doors. It took me some time to
move my head, and with every slight movement a piercing pain responded in
the back of my head. Still I could make out the uneven blackness of the
houses on the opposite side of the street which was wet with rain. It
flickered in the darkness and I saw shadows in the middle of the street. A
closer look told me they were the remnants of our van. Dark, shapeless
pieces, asphalt broken and piled up, Or Were they bags of something a short
distance from me?
I was lying near the trunk of a tree that was barely distinguishable in
the darkness, I could even touch its old wrinkly bark. I pulled myself up
and got to a sitting position against the trunk. It became easier to breathe
and the pain subsided. I didn't feel it any longer if I didn't move my head.
My skull was intact I figured. I touched the back of my head and sniffed at
my fingers, the liquid was not blood but oil.
Overcoming my weakness I rose to my feet hanging on to the tree all the
while and continuing to peer into the empty darkness of the street. Finally,
I started to walk falteringly on shaking feet, and made my way to the wreck-
our van. "Boris Arkadievich! Martin!" I said softly. No answer. Finally I
went up to something shapeless, stretched out on the pavement. A closer
look.... It was half the body of a German in soldier's uniform. No feet, no
face. That was all that was left of our escort. A couple of steps away I
found a second body. He was hanging onto his gun with both hands, he was
lying spread-eagled in boots, no head. All that was left of our car was a
heap of fragments which in the dark looked like a crumpled newspaper. I went
round it and at the curb and found Martin.
I recognized him immediately by the short suede jacket and stove-pipe
trousers, no German soldiers ever wore them. I put my ear to his chest, it
was rhythmically rising and falling;
Martin was breathing. "Don!" I cried. He gave a jerk and whispered,
"Who's that?" "Are you alive, man?" "Yuri?" "Yes, it's me, can you get up?"
He nodded. I helped him to his feet and got him onto the curb. He was
breathing heavily and apparently had not yet got used to the darkness: his
eyes blinked. We sat there a couple of minutes and then he said:
"Where are we? I can't see anything, maybe I've gone blind?"
"Look at the sky. Do you see any stars?"
"Yea, I can see stars okay."
"No broken bones?"
"Don't think so. What's happened?"
"Somebody must have thrown a bomb at our car. Where's Zernov?"
"I don't know."
I got up and went around the remains of our wreck and took a good look
at the bodies of our escorts. Zernov was not there.
"The situation's bad," I said when I got back, "no sign of him."
"Were you looking at somebody?"
"Yes, the bodies of the guards. One has the head missing, the other's
without feet."
"We in the back got out alive, so he must have too. He's probably gone
some place."
"Without us? I don't think so."
"Maybe he returned?"
"Where to?"
"To real life. From this witch's wedding. He might be lucky, and we
might be too."
I gave a whistle.
"We'll get out," Martin said, "just wait, we're sure to get out."
"Be quiet, listen!"
A heavy door behind us squeaked slowly and then opened up. A beam of
bright light broke through and tore away the heavy drapery at the door. It
grew dark again, but the figure of a woman appeared in the flash of light.
She was dressed in black. All I could see now was a hazy shadow. Subdued
music was coming from beyond the door. A popular German waltz.
The woman, still almost indistinguishable in the dark, started down the
staircase. Only the narrow sidewalk separated her from us. We sat still.
"What's the trouble?" she asked. "Has something happened?"
"Nothing much," I replied. "Our car's blown up, that's all."
"Yours?" she asked in surprise.
"The one in which we were riding or in which we were being driven, to
be more precise."
"Who were you with?"
"Soldiers, an escort, naturally," I said a bit irritated.
"And that's all?"
"Do you want to collect the pieces?"
"Don't be angry. The chief of the Gestapo was supposed to be going by."
"Who? Lange?" I asked in surprise. "He's back there in the hotel."
"That's what was supposed to have happened," she said deep in thought.
"That's exactly the way it happened. They blew up an empty van, that's all.
Where are you from? Did Etienne think you people up too?"
"Nobody thought anybody up, Madame," I said. "We are here by accident
and not of our own free will. Excuse me, I do not speak French so well. It
is difficult for me to explain. Perhaps you know English?"
"English?" again surprise. "But how can...."
"I can't explain that to you even in English. What is more, I'm not
English anyway."
"Hello, ma'am," put in Martin, "but I'm from the States. You know the
song, Yankee Doodle was in hell ... and he says it's cool! Well, let me tell
you, ma'am, it's hotter in this hell."
She laughed.
"What shall I do with you?"
"I'd just as soon dampen my parched throat," said Martin.
"Follow me. There's nobody in the cloak-room and I've let the
hall-porter go. Your luck, Monsieur."
We followed her into a dimly lit cloak-room. The first thing I noticed
were the German army raincoats on the hangers and the high-crown officer
caps. Next to the cloak-room was a tiny closet-like affair without windows.
The walls were pasted over with sheets from film magazines. It accommodated
only two chairs and a table with a fat registry journal.
"Is this a hotel or a restaurant?" Martin asked the woman.
"The officer's casino."
For the first time I looked her straight in the face and was
dumbfounded, paralysed, speechless, like Lot's wife. She became tense,
cautious, on guard.
"You surprised? Do you happen to know me?"
Then Martin said: "This is interesting."
I was silent.
"What's all this mean, Monsieur?" the woman
"Irene," I said in Russian, "I don't get it." Why is Irene here, in
other peoples' dreams and in a dress of the forties?
"My god, he's Russian!" she exclaimed in Russian too.
"How did you get here?"
"Irene is my underground name. How do you happen to know it?"
"I don't know any underground names. I don't even know you have one.
The only thing I know is that an hour ago we were having. dinner in the
Hotel Homond in Paris."
"There's been some mistake," she said estranged and coldly.
I was boiling.
"You don't recognize me? Rub your eyes.' .
"Who are you anyway?"
I forgot about the dress of the forties and the surroundings brought to
life by alien recollections.
"Which one of us has gone mad? We came-from Moscow just a little while
ago. How could you have forgotten that?"
"When did we come?"
"Yesterday." I'm beginning to stutter.
"In what year?" This time I was so dumbfounded, my mouth just
opened-what could I say if she could ask a question like that?
"Don't be surprised, Yuri," Martin whispered behind me: he couldn't
understand anything but guessed what was exciting me so. "This is not she
but a werewolf."
She was still looking at me and Martin as total strangers.
"Memory of the future," she said mysteriously. "It may be that he
thought of that at some time. Perhaps he even met you and her. Looks like
me? And her name's Irene? Strange." "Why?" I couldn't contain myself.
"Because I had a daughter named Irene. In 1940 she was about a year old.
Osovets took her to Moscow, before the fall of Paris." "What Osovets? The
academician?" "No, just a scientist. He worked with Paul Langevin."
A spark shot through the darkness. That's the way it is sometimes, you
rack your brain over some problem and then all of a sudden you gain a
hypnotizing flash of a solution. "And what about you and your husband?" "My
husband left with the embassy for Vichy. He left later and alone. He stopped
at some farm along the way, the water in the radiator was boiling, or maybe
he simply wanted a drink of water. The roads were being bombed. That's all.
A direct hit ...." She smiled wistfully, probably used to it by now, she
smiled. "I smile this way because that is precisely the way Etienne imagines
me. Actually, it was terrible, awful."
Everything coincided. Osovets was not an academician yet at that time,
but he had worked with Langevin. That I knew. Obviously, he was the one who
had brought Irene up. And it was from him that she had learned about her
mother. And about the similarity too, probably. But what has Etienne got to
do with it all?
I couldn't but ask her about it. She laughed.
"The point is that I am his imagination. He is most likely thinking
about me right this minute. He was in love with me, head over heels in love.
And still and all he betrayed me."
I recalled the words of Lange: "He betrayed the woman he was
desperately, hopelessly in love with. He wanted to betray so much." So this
was before our encounter with the Gestapo. That means that in this life the
reference system of time was quite different. It was shuffled like cards in
a deck.
"Perhaps you want something to eat?" she suddenly asked in quite a
human way.
"I wouldn't refuse a drink," said Martin, guessing at what the topic of
conversation was.
She nodded, screwed up her eyes just like Irene and smiled. Even the
smiles were the same.
"Wait for me here, no one will come. But if they do.... You of course
haven't any weapons." She moved a board under the table and pulled out a
handgrenade and a small flat Browning. "It's not a toy, don't laugh, very
reliable, particularly at close range." She left. I took the Browning,
Martin the handgrenade.
"That's Irene's mother," I said.
"This is getting worse and worse, where'd she come from?"
"She says Etienne conjured her up. She was with him in the Resistance
during the war."
"Another werewolf," he said, and spat in disgust, "I'd like to heave
this grenade into the whole bunch of them." He slapped his pocket.
"Don't get excited. They're real human beings. People, not puppets.
This isn't Sand City."
"Human beings!" mocked Martin. "They know they are repeating somebody's
life, they even know the future of the life they are duplicating. This is
worse than 'Dracula'. D'ya ever see that film? About vampires. Dead in the
daytime, alive at night. That's human beings for you. I'm afraid that after
a night of happenings like that we'll need strait-jackets. If, of course,
they don't knock us out. I wonder what the papers would say. Killed by
visitors from the past life of Mr. Lange. Spectres with guns. Or something
like that."
"Hey, pipe down," I said, "we might be heard. It's not so bad yet.
We've even got guns. Maybe things will turn out all right."
Irene returned. I did not know her name and so, to myself, kept calling
her Irene.
"I can't bring drinks in here," she said, "we might be seen. Let's go
into the bar. They're all drunk in there, and two more guests will not mean
anything. The barman has been warned. But tell the American to keep quiet
and to answer all questions in French with 'Sore throat, can't speak."
What's your name? Martin. Repeat that, Martin, 'Sore throat, can't speak'."
Martin repeated the sentence in French a few times to get used to it.
She corrected him.
"Okey, that'll do. You'll be safe for half an hour for sure. In half an
hour Lange'll return with a miner and the submachine-gunners. There's an
inside staircase leading from the bar into an upper room where General Baire
is playing bridge. Under his table is a delayed-action mine, in forty-five
minutes the building will explode."
"Jesus Christ!" I yelled. "Let's get a move on then."
"It won't, don't get excited," she said sadly. "Etienne has reported
everything to Lange. I'll be caught upstairs in Baire's room, the miner will