'clouds' to play down stocks. Or preachers proclaming the end of the world. Or perhaps film producers putting out things like 'Bob Merrile Vanquishes Horsemen From Nowhere'. All of that is nothing more than a broken sewage main. I have something quite different in mind...." "War?" "With whom? The 'clouds'? I'm not an idiot to think that mankind is sufficiently armed to combat a civilization that is capable of creating all manner of atomic structures. I spoke of chasing out the 'clouds', more precisely of the necessity to find ways and means of contributing to this aim." The Admiral added: "Powerful as this civilization is, it might have a weak spot, an Achilles heel. Then why shouldn't we seek it? It seems to me that our scientists are not energetic enough in making contacts, and not so much in the sense of reaching an understanding between us human beings and the strangers, but in the sense of a direct, immediate, so to say, spatial approach to the cosmic visitors in order to study and observe them. Why is it that their terrestrial base has not yet been located? I would send out a number of expeditions, one of the aims being to locate the weak spot that I am sure they have. The problem is one of vulnerability. Then everything would take on quite a different aspect." In this rather loud and outspoken interview the Admiral did not appear to me to be either a maniac or an eccentric, but simply not a very clever person. Yet I felt that his consistent, fanatical prejudice might, in the future, be still more dangerous than the as yet undeclphered actions of our visitors from space. This was slightly hinted at by the interviewer when he cautiously pointed out that to include Admiral Thompson in the American scientific delegation to the Paris international conference might complicate coordination of its efforts. I passed on both the clippings together with Martin's letter to Zernov in the plane. We occupied what amounted to a separate compartment because it was isolated by the high backs of seats in front and in back. Osovets and Rogovin were to arrive in Paris in two days, just as the congress got underway. We had left earlier so as to take part in the press conference of eye witnesses and to meet the Americans from MacMurdo who did not share Admiral Thompson's views and who had acquired a certain amount of fresh experience with the cosmic visitors after the Admiral had left. We had just had breakfast after taking off from the Moscow airport at Sheremetievo. It was cool in the plane and all the little local sounds like rustling newspapers and conversation were drowned out by the subdued roar of the jet engines. This was just the time for a talk about Martin's letter. While Zernov was reading and rereading the pages of the letter I whispered to Irene: "You remember the letter of course. Try to recall all unclear places and formulate some questions. Zernov is like a professor at the lectern who does not like imprecision, misunderstanding." "Why? Is there such a thing as precise misunderstanding?" "Naturally. What I don't understand I doubt. The imprecise kind is when you can't determine the chief unclear point, a stupid question and wide-open know-nothing eyes." I hid behind the newspaper preferring not to hear the reply. Anyway, I would have to formulate all the obscurities by myself. What is the difference between Martin's werewolves and the memorable doubles? I grouped them mentally: empty eyes, lack of understanding of many questions addressed to them, automatic movements and actions, confused ideas about time, vision unlike human vision; they were not able to see the sun, the blue sky and were not surprised at the electric light on the street in the daytime. They did not appear to have any human memory: Martin's girl did not simply fail to recognize Martin, she did not remember him. The bullets from Martin's pistol penetrated these people without causing any bodily harm. Hence, the inner Structure of their bodies differed from human beings. Apparently, the "clouds" did not copy people in this case but only set up externally similar robots with a restricted programme. Thus, we have the first absurd feature: why was the method of simulation changed and within what limits was it changed? But the clouds built models of things too, not only humans. The duplicate of our tracked vehicle was real. So were all the things in Martin's city. The drinks could be drunk, the cigarettes smoked and the cars driven in. And the bullets of the police-guns even went through brick walls. The houses had real windows and doors, and real cafes dealt in real coffee and hot dogs, the owner of a real gas station sold real oil and gasoline. At the same time, real automobiles appeared like phantoms on the highway that went through the city. They appeared out of nothing, out of emptiness and disappeared at the other end just as mystically and into the same emptiness or nothing, into the cloud of dust that had just been raised by the passing car itself. Not all the doors in the houses led somewhere. Some of them did not lead anywhere, for beyond was a void-a nonpenetrable and black void like compressed smoke. So there was some other system of model-building surrounding things that restricted it in some way. Let us now formulate the second unclear point: Why another system, for what purposes and in what way restricted? Another puzzling thing: Zernov had already allowed for a different system of simulation in the building of the duplicate airplane on the way to Moscow from Mirny. Did this coincide with what Martin had described? "To some extent," replied Zernov, after thinking. "Apparently, the clouds create different models in unlike ways. Remember the crimson fog in the plane when you couldn't see across the aisle? In Sand City it isn't even known exactly whether the fog reached that thickness. The paper writes that the air was transparent and pure but coloured or lighted red. The type of model should be connected with the density of the gas. I think that the people in Martin's phantom city were still less human beings than the passengers of our duplicate plane. Why? Let's try to figure it out. You remember, at Karachi, I told you that the people in our airplane were not modelled to the full extent of their biological complexity but only so far as their specific functions go. The entire complicated psychic life of the human being was disconnected, crossed out because the makers of the model did not need it. But the passengers of our plane were not merely Aeroflot passengers. You wouldn't say that, socially speaking, they were only linked by their specific trip, would you? And there were a lot of other things besides: the year spent together, work, friendly or unfriendly relations with one's neighbours, plans for the future, musings about coming reunions. All these factors expanded and complicated their function as passengers. That is why the creators of the model probably had to refine it and retain some cells of the memory, certain mental processes. I think that life in the duplicate plane was very much like our own." "Or was repeated like a tape recording," I added. "Hardly. They build models not patterns. Even in Martin's city, life did not repeat what was occurring in the real Sand City. For example, the police pursuit. But note that people in this model of the city are still farther removed from human beings. Only the function is reproduced: the pedestrian walks, the driver drives a car, the salesman sells or offers goods, and buyers buy or refuse. That is all. Yet they are not puppets. They can think, reason, and act, but only within the limits of the function. Tell the waitress in a cafeteria of the modelled city that you don't like the hot dogs. She will straightway say that canned hot dogs do not spoil, that the can was opened hardly fifteen minutes ago, but that if you would like to have her give you a beefsteak instead, well done or with blood, as you like, she'll see to it. She can flirt, wisecrack if she's smart, since that too comes within her professional function. That is why she did not recall Martin: he was not associated with her work." "But why did the policemen remember him?" Irene asked. "He didn't rob a bank, or pick any pockets or get drunk and fight on the street. Where is the connection with the function?" "You remember the clipping from the newspaper? During the fog a New York lawyer was beaten up. The police were late and, unfortunately, did not find the culprits. You noticed the 'unfortunately', didn't you? The police of course knew who was to blame but did not plan to find them. But why not find somebody in place of them? Some kind of drunkards or bums? That was the purpose of the police at that moment. In the real Sand City they did not find anyone. In the modelled city, they came upon Martin and his friends. "I would have liked to be in his place," I said with envy. "And get a bullet through your head? The bullets were real." "And Martin's were too. Maybe he did miss after all?" "I don't think so," said Zernov, "it is simply that wounds dangerous to human beings are not dangerous when it comes to these bio-golems. Their bodies were hardly very much like the human organism." "And the eyes? They saw Martin." "Like a crossword puzzle," Irene laughed. "The words fit, but they're not the words. Certain things dovetail, but a lot doesn't." "Certainly a crossword puzzle," Zernov added smiling. "What else could it be? You can't get hold of the policeman and put him on the operating table to find out what makes him tick. Of course, then we would find out whether he has the same innards as we. What do we have to resolve the problem with? A slide rule? A microscope? X-rays? It's a joke. We haven't got anything so far, except our logic. And words. Incidentally, the eyes are not the same," he said, referring to my remark. "They saw Martin but they didn't see the sun. They are not our eyes. Because they were programmed to exist only within the limits of a certain modelled hour. Time itself was simulated. And the cars on the highway were modelled in motion within the limits of the same interval of time and the same region of space. That is how it came about that they entered the twin city from nowhere and vanished into no one knows where. A real puzzle," he smiled. "Camouflage," I added. "Something like our houses. The outside wall is a real wall and the inside empty, a void, a black nothingness. I'd like to see it through," I said, sighing. "We're supposed to be eye-witnesses, but what have we. seen? Not much." "We'll see some more," put in Zernov mysteriously, "you and I and Martin too are labelled. They'll show us something new yet, perhaps accidentally but maybe purposely. I'm afraid they will." "You're afraid?" I asked in surprise. "Yes, I'm afraid," Zernov said and fell silent. The plane had cut through the clouds and was descending towards the distant city shrouded in haze with the familiar, from childhood, silhouette of the delicate lacework of the Eiffel Tower. From a distance it looked like an obelisk made of the finest nylon thread.  * PART THREE. JULIET AND SPECTRES Chapter XVII. PRESS CONFERENCE AT THE HOTEL "HOMOND" In connection with the coming congress, Paris was flooded with tourists. Our delegation stayed at the Homond Hotel, a small first-class establishment that was proud of being old-fashioned. The wooden staircases creaked, the heavy draperies were dust covered and elegant ancient chandeliers reminded one of Balzac's day. Candles were alight on the tables, windowsills, at hearth places-not as a tribute to fashion, but as stubborn competitors of electricity, which was something they had to put up with, nothing more. The Americans did not like that arrangement, but we did not seem to feel it. Perhaps because we hardly stayed inside for more than a few minutes. Irene and I spent the two hours before the press conference taking our first sights of the city. I gaped at every architectural wonder while she condescendingly explained when and for whom it was built. "How come you know Paris so well?" I asked in surprise. "This is my third visit, and then I was born in Paris. My baby carriage travelled these very streets. I'll tell you about it some day," she said mysteriously and laughed out loud. "Even the doorman at the hotel greeted me like an old acquaintance." "When?" "When you paid off the taxicab. Zernov and I went in to the lobby and the doorman-an old bald-headed lord, you might say-looked us over with professional indifference, and then suddenly opened his eyes wide, stepped back and looked at me intently. 'What's the trouble?' I asked in surprise. But there he stood looking at me, silent. So Zernov asked: 'You probably recognize mademoiselle?' 'No, no,' he said collecting his wits, 'mademoiselle is simply very much like one of our clients.' But he seemed to recognize me, though I've never stayed at that hotel. Strange." When we returned to the hotel, the doorman did not even look at Irene, but he smiled and said that we were expected. "Go straight to the rostrum". The conference was indeed just about to begin in the restaurant hall of the hotel. The Americans had already arrived and took up the greater part of the concert stage. Television operators were racing about with their black boxes. Correspondents and newsmen with cameras, notebooks and tape recorders were set up at desks. Waiters were offering bottles with multicoloured labels. We had a table on the stage too, and it had already been well supplied with all manner of drinks by the Americans. Irene remained in the hall; no translation was needed since all, or nearly all, present spoke both French and English. True, my French was not much. I understood fairly well, but couldn't speak very well, but I figured Zernov's presence would relieve me of most of the conversation. I was wrong on that score, though. The newsmen were out to squeeze every ounce of us "witnesses of the phenomenon". And what is more, I was the author of the film that was making a great impression on Parisian audiences for the second week now. The conference was chaired by MacEdou, an astronomer from MacMurdo. He was already used to the reporters wisecracks about MacEdou from MacMurdo and "much ado about MacEdou." But he was hard to embarrass. He steered our ship in the conference storm with the skill of an experienced helmsman. Even his voice was that of a captain-loud, imperative especially when the questions got too insistent. It was not by accident that I referred to the storm. Three hours previously, journalists met in another Parisian hotel with another "witness of the phenomenon" and a delegate to the congress, Admiral Thompson. He refused to take part in our press conference for reasons which he preferred to tell newsmen in a private talk. The import of the reasons and the gist of his pronouncements became clear after the first queries were posed. The delegates specifically questioned gave their answers, all other queries were handled by MacEdou. I didn't remember everything, but what I did went like a tape-recording. "Do you have any information about the press conference of Admiral Thompson?" That was the first tennis ball thrown into the hall and it was tossed back by the chairman as follows: "I'm sorry to say I know nothing, but honestly speaking, I am not very worried." "But that's a sensational statement the Admiral made." "Very possible." "He demands preventive measures against the rose clouds." "You print that in your papers. I would like questions." "What will you say if some of the UN delegates demand punitive measures against the newcomers?" "I am not the minister for war, I can't say anything about such demands." "But if you were the minister what would you say?" "Haven't been thinking along those lines for a career." Laughter and applause was the reply of the hall. MacEdou made a wry face, he didn't like theatrical effects. Not even smiling he took his seat without a word, since the man who had asked the question gave up. But he was quickly followed by a second one. He did not risk a collision with the eloquence of MacEdou and picked another victim. "I would like to ask Professor Zernov a question. Do you agree that the actions of the rose clouds might endanger humanity?" "Of course not," Zernov responded at once. "So far the clouds have not done any harm at all to human beings. Reduction of the terrestrial ice mass will only improve the climate. No damage has been inflicted either on nature or on the work of man." "Do you insist on that view?" "Absolutely. The only harm done was to a stool that disappeared in Mirny together with my duplicate, and an automobile that Martin left in the duplicated Sand City." "What automobile?" "When?" "Where's Martin?" "Martin's coming tomorrow evening." That was MacEdou. "Was he in Sand City?" "Ask him yourself." "How does Professor Zernov know about Martin's car that vanished?" MacEdou turned round to Zernov and looked questioningly at him. Zernov said: "I have the news directly from Martin himself. I am not empowered to give the details, however. But I think that one old stool and a second-hand car is not so much damage to humanity." "A question for Professor Zernov!" came several cries from the hall. "What is your attitude towards the Admiral's statement that doubles represent a 5th column of the invaders and a prelude to a future galactic war?" "I feel that the Admiral has been reading too much science fiction of late and he takes it all for reality." "A question to Anokhin, author of the film. The Admiral believes that you are a double and that your film was taken by a double, whereas the episode of the death of your double in the film was actually the death of Anokhin himself. Have you proof that this is not true?" I could only shrug my shoulders. How could I prove it? MacEdou answered for me: "Anokhin doesn't need to offer any proof. In science we have the inviolate principle of 'presumption of an established fact'. Scientists do not need to verify and prove the falsity of some groundless assertion, let the author prove that his assertion is true." There was some more applause. But this time the lanky MacEdou interrupted the hand-clapping: "This is not a show, gentlemen." "What does the chairman think about Mr. Thompson?" someone cried out. "You worked with the Admiral for a whole year in an Antarctic expedition. What is your impression of him as a scientist and as a man?" "That's the first reasonable question so far," MacEdou grinned. "Unfortunately, I cannot satisfy the curiosity of the questioner. The Admiral and I worked in the same expedition and at the same geographical site, but in different spheres. He is an administrator and I am an astronomer. We hardly ever came into contact. He never displayed the least interest in my astronomical observations and I do not care a bit for his administrative abilities. I'm pretty sure he himself lays no claim to scientific titles, at any rate I am not acquainted with any of his scientific papers. As a person, I hardly know him at all, though I am convinced that he is honest and is not acting in the interest of politics or in self-interest. He has not made an oath to anticommunism nor is he taking part in the presidential campaign. What he preaches is, I believe, based on a false prejudice and on erroneous conclusions." "What is your opinion about how humanity should act?" "Recommendations will be given by the Congress." "Then I have a question that concerns you as an astronomer. Where do you think these monsters have come from?" MacEdou laughed out loud for the first time and quite sincerely. "I don't find anything so monstrous in them. They resemble horsemen or the delta-wing of an airplane, sometimes a very large and pretty flower, and at other times a rose-colour dirigible. Probably aesthetic views differ, theirs and ours. We'll find out where they have come from when they themselves desire to answer that question, if of course we are able to pose it. It may be they are from a neighbouring stellar system. Perhaps the Andromeda Nebula, or from the nebula in the Triangle constellation. It's senseless to guess." "You said: when they answer themselves. So you think contact is possible?" "So far not a single attempt at contact has yielded any results. But it is attainable. Of that I am convinced if they are living intelligent beings and not biosystems with a specific programme." "Do you have in view robots?" "I do not refer to robots. I have in view programmed systems in general. In that case, contact depends on the programme." "But what if they are self-programming systems?" "Then everything depends on how the programme varies under the effects of external factors. Attempts at contact are also an external factor." "May I ask Anokhin a question? Did you observe the actual process of model construction?" "It can't be observed," I remarked, "because the person is in a comatose state." "But a copy of the tracked vehicle appeared right before your eyes. A huge machine made of metal and plastic. Where did it come from? Out of what materials was it made?" "Out of the air," I said. There was laughter in the hall. "There is nothing to laugh about," Zernov put in. "That's exactly what it is: from the air, out of elements unknown to us and delivered in some kind of novel manner." "A miracle?" came the question with a measure of mockery. But Zernov was not taken aback. " 'Miracles' has been the label, at one time or another, for anything that could not be accounted for at the given level of knowledge. Our level likewise allows for the unaccountable, but it also presumes that explanations will be forthcoming in the course of subsequent development of scientific progress. And its momentum at present already allows us to predict, roughly of course, that in the middle or towards the end of next century it will be possible to reproduce objects by means of waves and fields. What waves and what fields is a matter for the level of future knowledge. But I am personally convinced that in that corner of the cosmos, whence these beings came, science and life have already reached that level." "What kind of life is it?" asked a woman's voice, or so it seemed to me, with a hysterical ring to it and obvious horror. "How can we converse with it if it is a liquid, what sort of contact is possible if it is a gas?" "Here, drink some water," MacEdou calmly took over. "I don't see you, but it seems to me that you are overexcited." "I am simply beginning to believe Mr. Thompson." "I congratulate Mr. Thompson on another convert. As to thinking structures consisting of a liquid or colloid, I can say that we exist in a semiliquid state. The chemistry of our life is the chemistry of carbon and aqueous solutions." "And the chemistry of their life?" "What is the solvent? Ours is water, and theirs?" "Maybe its fluorine life?" The answer came from an American on the extreme right. "Everything that I am going to say is hypothetical. Fluorine life? Don't know. In that case the solvent might be hydrogen fluoride or fluorine oxide. Then it's a cold planet. For fluorine creatures a temperature of minus one hundred degrees is pleasantly cool. To put it mildly, in that coolish medium, ammonium life is possible too. It is even more realistic since ammonia occurs in the atmospheres of many of the major planets, whereas liquid ammonia exists at a temperature of thirty-five degrees below zero. Almost terrestrial conditions, you might say. And if one gives thought to the adaptability of the guests to our earthly conditions, the ammonia hypothesis will appear to be the most probable. But if one presumes that the strangers themselves create the necessary conditions for their life, any 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. Chapter XVIII. A NIGHT OF TRANSFORMATIONS 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." Chapter XIX. THIS MAD MAD MAD WORLD 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. Chapter XX. IRENE'S DOUBLE 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 disconnect the timing device, and Lange will be promoted to Sturmbahnfuhrer. You will wait a couple of minutes after he leaves and then you can leave quietly yourselves." I opened my mouth and closed it again. That was a conversation for a psychiatric ward. But she continued: "Don't be surprised. Etienne was not there at the time, but Lange remembers everything. He went into every corner and interrogated every one of the guests. He has an excellent memory. It took place exactly the way you will see it." We followed without a word, trying not to look at one another and refusing to make sense of the events. There was no sense. Chapter XXI. WE CHANGE THE PAST There was a card game going in the first room. The stench was of tobacco smoke so thick you could hardly make things out. Like waves, it got thicker and then dispersed, but even in the more translucent moments everything looked strangely deformed, fluid, changing, as if the outlines of this world did not obey the laws of Euclidean geometry. A long ski-like arm would reach out, cards all extended, and hoarse voices overlapping, "five another five,... pass... lead...". Then the whole would be blanketed out by a tray with cognac, and on the long label somebody's face-like on TV-with neatly trimmed mustachios, or the face would be transformed into a placard with a mug yelling "VER-BOTEN! VERBOTEN! VERBOTEN!" Or grey heads without faces, a voice in the smoke repeating "Thirty minutes, ... thirty minutes." The cards rustled like leaves in the wind. The lights grew dim. Eyes smarted from the smoke. "Irene," I called. She turned around. "I'm not Irene." "It's all the same. What is this? The mirror-laughing room?" "What's that?" "Don't you remember? In the park? All those distorting mirrors?" "No," she smiled. "It's simply that nobody remembers the surroundings exactly. The details. Etienne is trying to recall them. Lange has only fleeting disconnected glimpses, he cannot think through to minutiae." I was stuck again. What was all this about? I had an inkling but not much more. "This is a dream, sure thing," said Martin more confused than before. "The memory cells of two persons are at work." I tried to find an explanation of some kind. "Conceptions are materialized, and they conflict, suppressing one another." "Hogwash," he said. We entered the bar. It was behind an archway separated from the hall by a curtain hung on bamboo poles. German officers were morosely swilling liquor at the counter. No chairs. Couples on a long couch-like affair were kissing. I figured that Lange must have remembered this spectacle very well. But none of the performers even looked at us. Irene whispered to the barman and then disappeared in a hole in the wall where a stone staircase went up. The barman put two glasses of cognac in front of us and left. Martin tried it. "The real thing," he said and licked his lips. "Shh..." I hissed, "you're not an American, you're French." "Sore throat, can't speak," he blurted out and winked slyly. But nobody was listening to us. I looked at the clock. Lange was due in fifteen minutes. I got an idea. If Lange, say, does not reach the upper room, and the miner does not defuse the mine, General Baire and his bunch will neatly go up into a million pieces. That's interesting. Lange will arrive with a submachine-gunner and the miner. The miner most likely has no weapon, they'll leave the armed man near the entrance to the stairway. There's a chance. In whispers I told Martin about my idea. He nodded. There was slight risk of the officers in the bar getting involved-they could hardly stand on their feet. Some were already snoring on the couch. The kissing couples had disappeared somewhere. The situation was very favourable. Another ten minutes passed. Another minute, two, three. There were seconds left. That was when Lange entered. Not the Lange that we knew but the Lange of the past, not yet a Sturmbahnfuhrer. If he recalled this episode, we did not participate and so we were out of danger. The actions were programmed by memory: reach the mine and prevent a catastrophe. He was accompanied by an oldish soldier in glasses and a very young Gestapo man with a submachine-gun. He went fast, not stopping anywhere, gave a piercing glance at the officers sitting round their cognac and hurried upstairs with the miner. They were in a hurry. As we guessed, the submachine-gunner remained at the bottom of the staircase. That very second Martin stepped up to him and, without swinging, punched straight to the nose and knocked him off his feet. He didn't even drop his gun. Martin grabbed him in the air. I had the Browning and raced up the stairs towards Lange who turned around. "Drop, Yuri," Martin shouted. I did and that instant a burst of fire cut down both of them: Lange and the miner. All this took a fraction of a second. Nobody even looked out of the bar room. But, from above, "Irene" looked down. A few seconds passed, then slowly she began to descend, without asking any questions she passed the dead SS men crouching on the steps. "Did anyone hear the shots?" I asked looking upwards. "Nobody except me. They are so engaged in their game that they won't even hear the explosion." She shuddered and closed her face with her hands. "Oh, my God, they haven't defused the mine." "That's perfect, on the contrary," I exclaimed. "Let the whole works go to hell. Come on, let's get out of here." She still couldn't make things out. "But that is not what happened then." "That's what's going to happen now, though." I grabbed her hand. "Is there another exit?" "Yes." "Then you lead the way." She led the way as if walking in her sleep, she got us out to the dark street below. Martin wiped out the guard below in the same fashion. "That's four," he said, "didn't even need the grenade." "Five," I corrected him. "Your count began in the Antarctic." "Now they'll have to begin modelling a heaven for them." A few more words were exchanged as we ran down the middle of the street in an unknown direction in total darkness. Suddenly something exploded and then a burst of fiery sparks shot skywards. For an instant, "Irene's" enormous eyes flashed in front of me. It was only then that I noticed that this "Irene" was not wearing glasses. A siren wailed in the distance. Then a car motor coughed into action Then another. The blaze of the fire had now lit up the whole street. "How could this be?" "Irene" suddenly asked. "That means I'm alive? Is this another life? Not that one?" "Now it's developing independently, in accord with the laws of the time; we've turned it," I said and malevolently added: "Now you can take revenge on Etienne." The siren was still screaming. Nearby, lorries were clattering down the street. I looked around. Martin wasn't there. "Don!" I cried, "Martin!" Nobody responded. We bumped into the gate of a churchyard, it was open. In there it was dark, beyond the range of the light from the fire. "Here!" "Irene" whispered to me, taking me by the hand. I followed. Then the darkness suddenly began to melt away, flowing down a stairway that had opened up in front of us. Somebody was sitting on the upper step. Chapter XXII. ON AN ISLAND OF SAFETY I took a closer look and saw that it was Zernov. "Boris Arkadievich, is that you?" He turned around. "Anokhin? Where'd you come from?" I recalled Martin's Yankee Doodle song. Yes, but where was Martin? "He isn't here," Zernov said. "I'm alone." "Where are we?" He laughed. "You don't recognize the interior? Hotel Homond, second floor. I landed here when we were thrown out of the car. What happened afterwards?" "Somebody threw a bomb under the wheels." "That's luck," Zernov said, "well, I was kind of doubtful about the strength of the Gestapo anyway. But I wouldn't want to test fate any more. I've been sitting here from that minute and I'm afraid to move. After all, this is an island of safety. Familiar surroundings, not spectres. So take a seat and let's hear what it's all about." He moved making room for me too. However, my story did not make a great impression on Zernov, despite the gamut of unexpected events that ran through it. He listened without uttering a word or asking any questions. I asked: "Have you seen Fellini's picture 'Juliet and the Ghosts'?" Zernov wasn't even surprised by the question, though it promised agreement or perhaps argument. Zernov did not speak up and waited for my continuation. I continued: "My idea is that they and Fellini take a similar view of the world. A surrealistic nightmare. Everything is turned inwards, all reality is only the projection of somebody's thoughts, somebody's memory. If you had only seen that casino in St. Disier. The whole thing was smeared out, broken into fragments, deformed. The elements were there but the proportions were distorted. You recall in Fellini's world how the disconnected world of the subconscious mixes in with the world of reality. I'm after the logic of the matter but I'm unable to grasp it." "Nonsense," Zernov interrupted. "You are simply not in the habit of analysing and have not been able to connect the pieces of what you have witnessed. Fellini is far removed from all this. What has the cinema and art generally got to do with this? They model memory for motives that are not aesthetic. Most likely God himself could not create a more exact model." "Of what?" I was cautious. "The psychic domains of certain of the visitors of the Homond Hotel." "What visitors? There were a hundred people there. And we were tossed into the manure heap of a Gestapo man and this doorman. Why these two? Two standards of baseness or simply two random droplets of man's memory? And what precisely is it that is modelled? Ecstasy over the past or pangs of conscience? Then how does Irene's dream fit in here? And why were we allowed to dip into someone else's recollections yet prevented from touching another's dream? And why was Irene linked up with her mother, and why was the connection only on one side? The modelling is done of life suggested by someone's memory, and we are permitted to alter that life. But what kind of a model is it that does not replicate the original? Irene's mother stays alive, Lange is shot down by a burst of gunfire, and Etienne will probably be finished off by his own men. Why? In the name of supreme justice attained with our aid? I hardly think so; that would no longer be a model but creativity. Then what is real in this model and what is simply make believe? Whence flows the Moskva River and where does it break off? Perhaps it doesn't flow at all. Is the entire parapet made of granite or is the inside compressed smoke like in Sand City? Maybe the only reality in this model is myself, standing somewhere, whereas all the rest is a mirage, the projections of dreams and of memory. But of whose? What connection is there between it and the memory of Lange? Why connect the unconnectable? Why, in order to make contact with us, it is necessary to paste together the past and the present-what is more, an alien past-and then alter it? Millions of 'whys' and 'wherefores' and not one iota of logic." I said all that without stopping. A rose-coloured fog was billowing above us, condensing and turning crimson underneath, near the staircase. One could not distinguish things at a meter and a half distance. I counted six steps, the seventh was enveloped in red smoke. "Still billowing," said Zernov, catching my glance. "Let's sit quiet until it strikes. There are some answers to our queries. You'll answer them yourself after some thought. First of all, what is modelled? Not only the memory. The psychic make-up of the individual as well. Thoughts, wishes, recollections, dreams. Thoughts, as you know, are not always logical, associations are not always comprehensible, and recollections do not always follow events chronologically. Do not be surprised at the fragmentary nature or chaotic arrangement of what has been seen, this is not a film. Life, recreated by memory cannot be otherwise. Try to recall some eventful day of the past. Keep the events properly sequenced, from morning till evening. You'll never do it. No matter how hard you try, you will lack coherency and sequence. Something will be forgotten, something left out, something will be recalled more vividly, something hazily, some act will slip by nebulously and indistinct, and you will make yourself miserable striving to catch at the recollection that is just beyond your grasp. But still this is life. It may be hazy and alogical, but it is real and not concocted. Then of course there is the completely false." I couldn't get it. "False, why false?" "Imagined," he explained. "Life created solely by the force of whim, fancy or simply supposition. Say, recalling something read or seen at a movie, and you imagine yourself the hero, offering this life concocted by someone as the real actuality, or something you yourself create, invent, make up. It's lucky you and I haven't as yet come across any such life, if you can call it such. So far..." he repeated deep in thought. "The encounter might still take place. Not excluded at all. Look how it's billowing...." The red fluid was still flowing round the staircase. I sighed. "Taking their time about today, it seems. And silent as hell, awful silence, no squeaks, not a rustle." Zernov did not reply. A few seconds passed before he said, in a worried tone, "The curious thing is that every time we are given full freedom of action, they do not interfere or control us. And they give us to understand as much." "Martin and I never realized that," I said. "I still don't understand why we were allowed to alter the model?" "Well, you have the stimulus of experimentation, don't you? They are studying, trying and combining things. Say, an exposure of somebody's memory is obtained, a picture of the past. But this is not a film, only the course of a life. The past becomes, as it were, the present and ready to form the future. Now, do we have a new factor in the present The future will unavoidably change. We are the new factor, the basis of the experiment. With our help, they get two exposures of the same picture and can compare them. You think they understand everything we do? Most likely not. That's why they try one experiment after the other." "Yea, and meanwhile our hair stands on end," I said. It seemed to be getting lighter. Zernov noticed it too. "How many steps do you see?" he asked. "Ten," I counted. "There were six before, I counted them. The rest was a blur of red. I'm fed up with this. 'isle of safety'. My back's aching. Let's risk it, what do you say? Over to my room. We'll at least get some rest, like human beings." "Mine's a floor above yours." "Mine's right here," Zernov pointed to the nearest door that was still enveloped in red smoke. "Let's try." We dived into the flowing cloud of red, cautiously approached the door. Zernov opened it and we went in. Chapter XXIII. A CLASH But there was no room at all. No ceiling, no walls, no floor. Instead, a broad roadway opened up before us, grey from the dust. All about was grey, the bushes along the road, the woods beyond, all cockeyed, grotesquely distorted like the drawings of Gustav Dore, above this dirty ragged clouds crawled. "We risked it," said Zernov turning round. "Where has it gotten us?" On the right the road went down towards a river hid by a small hill, to the left it turned round an enormous oak tree, also grey, as if freshly powdered with lead dust. From that direction came the sounds of a shepherd's or, more likely, child's pipe because the melody was very primitive, monotonous with the same importunate sad refrain. We went over to the other side of the highway and beheld the most unlikely procession imaginable. A few dozen kids, little kids, dressed in shirts reaching to their knees and in pants, in tiny fur-trimmed jackets and in hoods and tassels. Heading the procession was a ragged man in the very same absurd jacket and short pants. He had on long woollen stockings and heavy shoes with tin buckles. He was the one who was piping the song that so hypnotized the children. Hypnotized is the word because the kids moved as if in a trance, speechless, never turning their heads to right or left. The leader kept on playing and kept on plunking his heavy feet down in a soldier's march, throwing up clouds of grey dust. "Hey," I yelled, when the curious procession had come up to us. "Leave'm alone," Zernov said. "That's a fairy tale " "A fairy tale?" "You know, the Pied Piper of Hamelin." Off in the distance, in an opening in the curved woods, rose Gothic spires of a medieval town. The children kept following the Pied Piper who had hypnotized them. I had wanted to grab the last one, barefoot in ragged pants, but I stumbled over something and spread out there on the road. Nobody even so much as turned his head. "Strange dust," I said knocking it out of my clothing, "Doesn't leave any traces." "Maybe there isn't any dust at all. And no road either," said Zernov with a smirk, and added, "False life, remember?" The solution to the riddle that had plagued me for so long at last percolated through. "You know why it's so grey all about? It's from the line illustrations to the fairy tale done in pencil or pen. Lines and blur, no colours at all. An illustration from a children's book." "We even know from which one. Remember the little girl and the cure at the table d'hote?" I did not answer, something changed instantaneously. The piping ceased. A distant clack of hooves on the road took its place. The familiar red fog enveloped the bushes. Incidentally, it vanished almost immediately and the bushes stretched out along the roadway all green. The woods disappeared and the road broke off into a steep rocky decline, beyond which vineyards sloped away. Lower still, just like in the Crimea, was a blue sea. Everything about took on its natural colours: the blue of the sky showing through breaks in the clouds, the red spots of clayey soil between rocks and the yellow of sun-burnt grass. Even the dust on the road was, you might say, suntan. "There's somebody coming on horseback," said Zernov, "the show isn't over yet." Three horsemen emerged from a turn in the road. They were coming single file, behind them were two horses both with saddles. The cavalcade came to halt near where we stood. All three of them were in different cuirasses and identical long black coats with copper buttons. Their jack boots, turned reddish from long wear, were covered with grey mud. "Who are these?" asked the senior horseman in broken French. Away from his black moustache stretched a week's growth of stubble. In his museum-piece cuirass and sheathless sword stuck into his belt, he seemed to have stepped right out of an old novel. "What century is it?" I asked myself mentally. "The thirty-years war or later? The soldiers of Wallenstein or Karl the Twelfth? Or the Swiss Reiters in France? And in what France? Before Richelieu or after?" "Papists?" asked the horseman. Zernov laughed. This masquerade was getting to be funny indeed. "We have no faith," he replied in good French, "we're not even Christians. We're atheists." "What's that he says, Captain?" asked the junior horseman. He spoke German. "I do not know myself," he said switching to German. "Strange dress too, like comedians at the fair." "Perhaps this is a mistake, Captain. They may not be the ones." "And where will we look for those? Let Bonnville himself Investigate. Come along," he added in French. "I can't," said Zernov. "What?" "I don't know how to ride a horse." The horseman laughed and said something in German. Now all three laughed. "So he can't ride horseback! A doctor, no less." "Put him in the middle. You two on the sides, one foot apiece. And see that he doesn't fall off. And you?" the black moustache turned to me. "I don't intend to go anyway," I said. "Yuri, don't argue!" Zernov yelled in Russian- he was already seated on the horse holding onto the pommel of the saddle. "Agree to everything and hold off as long as possible." "What's the language he speaks?" asked the black-moustache frowning. "Gipsy?" "Latin," I growled. "Dominus vobiscum. Let's get going." And I jumped into the saddle. It was not English, not modern, but of an old unfamiliar shape with copper badges at the corners. That did not disturb me, I had learned to ride horseback at the institute riding club that taught most of the elements of the modern pentathlon. Back in the old days a certain brave man volunteered to deliver an urgent message. He overcame all obstacles in his way: he jumped, ran, swam a rushing river, used firearms, and his sword. At the club we weren't taught that much, but we learned some of the elements. One thing, I wasn't very good at clearing obstacles on horseback. "If ever a fence or ditch turns up along the way, I'll never make it," I thought to myself apprehensively. But there was no time to think. The black moustache lashed my horse and we took off, catching up with Zernov with his side bodyguards. His face was whiter than paper, quite naturally, since this was his first ride in a saddle and what is more, in a furious race! We pounded along without a word spoken, the black moustache always close by. I heard the thud of the hooves of my horse, the heavy panting, the warmth of its neck, the tense resistance of the stirrups-no, this was no illusion, no deception, this was real life, a different alien life in other space and time, life that had sucked us under like a swamp its victims. The closeness of the sea, the warm humidity of the air, the twisting rocky road, vineyards on the slopes, unfamiliar trees with large broad leaves shining brightly in the sunlight, donkeys slowly dragging squeaky two-wheeled carts, one-storey stone houses in the villages, mica windows and garlands of drying red pepper, crude sculptures of madonnas near wells, men with bronze-tan torsos in ragged trousers reaching to their knees, women in homespun dresses, and completely naked children-this was a picture of the south, the south of France, and of no modern France either. We galloped for about an hour. Luckily there were no major obstacles, except huge boulders along the roadside, the remnants of landships cleared away long ago. A white stone wall half as high again as a man brought us to a halt. The wall surrounded a woods or park several kilometres on one side because the end was nowhere in sight. Here, where the wall turned northwards from the sea, was a man waiting. He was dressed in the same fancy-ball costume of green velvet and in well-worn reddish boots like those of my companions and in a hat without feathers but with a large brightly shined copper buckle. His right hand was in a sling made of rags, perhaps from an old shirt, one eye was covered with a black patch. There was something familiar in the face, though it was not the face that interested me but the sword at his side. Out of what century had this d'Artagnan appeared, though this one resembled more a common scarecrow than my favourite hero of childhood. The horsemen dismounted and pulled down Zernov. He could not even stand and slumped to the grass by the roadway. I wanted to help him, but the one-eyed man was already at his side. "Get up," he said to Zernov. "Can you stand?" "I can't", Zernov groaned. "What shall I do with you?" asked the one-eyed man worried, and then turned to me. "I've seen you some place before." I recognized him at once. This was Mongeus-seau, the interlocutor of the Italian movie man at the restaurant, Mongeusseau, rapierist and swordsman, Olympic champion and the first sword of France. "Where did you pick them up?" he asked the black moustache. "On the road. Aren't they the ones?" "Don't you see? What am I going to do with them?" he repeated at a loss. "I'm no longer Bonnville with them." A red cloud boiled up on the road. Out of the foam came a head, then black silk pajamas, I recognized the producer Carresi. "You are Bonnville and not Mongeusseau," he said. The corners of his lips and his sunken cheeks trembled terribly as he spoke. "You are somebody from another age. Clear?" "I have my memory," objected the one-eyed man. "Then stamp it out. Switch out. Forget everything outside the film." "Do these people have any relation to the film?" and the one-eyed glanced in my direction. "Have you warned them?" "No, of course not. That is the act of a different will. I am powerless to extract them. But you, Bonnville, can." "How?" "Like a Balzac hero freely creating the plot. My thoughts only direct you. You are the master of the plot. Bonnville is a mortal enemy of Savari. That is crucial to you at the present. But remember: without the right hand!" "As a lefty I won't even be allowed to contest?" "As the left-hander Mongeusseau, not even today. As a lefty, Bonnville living in another age will fight with his left hand." "Like a schoolboy." "Like a tiger." The cloud again boiled up consuming the film producer and then melted away. Bonnville turned to the dismounted horsemen. "Throw him over the wall." He nodded in the direction of Zernov lying on the ground. "Let Savari nurse him himself." "Wait a minute!" I cried. But the point of Bonnville's sword was at my chest. "Worry about yourself," he said imperiously. Zernov was already on the other side of the wall, not even having had time to cry out. "Murderer," I exclaimed. "Nothing's going to happen to him," Bonnville grinned. "The grass is up to your waistline over there. He'll rest for a while and then get up. Meanwhile let's not be wasting any time. Defend yourself!" He raised his sword. "Against you? That's ridiculous." "Why?" "Because you are Mongeusseau, Champion of France." "You are mistaken, I am Bonnville." "Don't try to fool me, I heard your conversation with the producer." "With whom?" he asked, failing to grasp what I had said. I looked him straight in the eye. He was not playing any role, he indeed had failed to understand. "You must have been seeing things." It was useless to argue: here, before me, was a switch-over man devoid of his own memory. The film producer had done the thinking for him. "Defend yourself," he repeated severely. I purposely turned my back to him. "What for? I don't intend to in the least." The point of the sword bit into my back, not deep, just through the jacket and enough for me to feel it. The most important thing was that I did not doubt for a moment that the sword would have pierced me through if he had struck with more force. I don't know how someone else would have acted in my place, but suicide does not have any attractions for me. To fight Mongeusseau would have been tantamount to committing suicide, but it was not Mongeusseau that had bared his sword, but lefty Bonnville. How long would I stand up against him? One minute, two minutes? Perhaps a bit longer, who knows. "Are you going to defend yourself?" he repeated once again. "I am unarmed." "Captain, your sword, please!" he cried. The black moustache, standing at some distance, threw me his sword. I caught it by the handle. "Well done," Bonnville remarked. The sword was light and sharp as a needle. It did not have the tip covering the point of the weapon in sporting contests that I was used to. But the wrist was protected by the familiar spherical guard. The grip was likewise convenient. I cut the air with it and heard the swish that recalled the days I fought for my team. "L'attack de droit," said Bonnville. I translated to myself "attack from the right". Bonnville was warning me condescendingly that he was not afraid to open up his plans to me. At that same instant he struck. I parried the blow. "Parre," he said. In fencing lingo, that means to congratulate on a successful defence. I retreated a little, protecting myself with the sword, which was somewhat longer than Bonn-ville's, thus giving me an advantage in defence. I tried to recall the words of my fencing instructor in the old days: "Don't let yourself be fooled; he will retreat and your sword will cut the air. Do not attack too soon." I made believe I was reverting to the defence. He jumped softly, cat-like, and dealt a blow from the left this time. Again I parried it. "Clever," Bonnville remarked. "You have intuition. Your luck that I attack with my left. You would be finished if it were with the right." His blade, went for me like a slender darting tentacle, quivering, as if in search. He was after an opening in my defence, even the tiniest. Our blades were holding a silent conversation. Mine said: "You won't get me, I'm longer than you. Just turn aside and I'll get your shoulder." His said: "You won't get away. See how I'm closing the distance? I'll get you in the arm now." Mine replied: "You won't have time. I'm above, and I'm longer than you are." But Bonnville got around the length of my sword, he took it aside and then dealt a lighting blow. However, the blade only pierced my jacket and skimmed the skin of my body. Bonnville frowned. "Let's take off our coats," and he stepped back. I remained where I stood. Without my jacket, in my shirt, and I felt freer. And perhaps more defenceless. In our sport contests we usually put on special jackets that were sewn with fine metal threads. When the sword contacted the metal threads, the blow was recorded electrically. Here a blow was a real one. The blade dipped into living tissue