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"THE WHOLE POINT of the movie is Delko’s bloody journey!" swore Igor in a passion. "Not how he sits on his ass in bloody Krasnoyarsk scribbling about something that happened twenty-eight years later when he was bloody dead!"
Arthur sprang to the defense of his alter ego. "I’m still planning a pretty heroic journey, yes? It’s just in a different direction, that’s all."
And Diana thought: How like a Caribbean pirate Arthur looks, with that patch over his eye! Like Captain Blood…. or---like Commander Adamavich, with a pet fly perched on his shoulder instead of a parrot. She giggled quietly. Igor directed a withering glare at her.
Outside, blank white mist continued to hide everything: a thick milky haze, a host of particles suspended in an ocean of time….
"Commander Milan Adamavich…" Diana only realized that she had uttered the words out loud, when it was too late to recall them.
"Ah! Yes, indeed. Hmmm. That Adamavich business again…." Bragin was visibly embarrassed. "One point I should have emphasized earlier on is that it’s quite hard to---how shall we put it? ---articulate the future, except in a caricature-like manner. By that, I mean this…." Bragin chuckled with a phony heartiness. "Aha! A grammatical solecism! And I have just now perpetrated it! Still, if we Russians must possess such a subtle language that we don’t even know the declensions of all our nouns….! Never mind. But I would ask you: What would a man of the eighteenth century make of a television set? He would have to assume that it was an ingenious camera obscura. By the same token, what would our eighteenth-century man make of the mushroom cloud from an atom bomb? Why, probably it would look like a volcanic eruption to him."
"What’s your point, man?" said Tisha. "Where do you think you're going with all this pseudo-intellectual blather?"
"This is not blather, Tisha Andropov. My point is that Arthur must necessarily misinterpret the future in terms of today. He symbolizes, in other words. Hence the Redstar-class starship, Galactica, he called it; the outlandish idea that our mighty union will eventually be split up into sixteen separate nations, and the comic book name of the Americans’ defense system."
Diana spoke impetuously. "But is there a starship of some sort? A ship that travels backwards through time and space?" She carried on pell-mell, ignoring Bragin’s look of reproof. "What I mean is: why this particular thing? Why this kind of starship rather than something else? He says that the Americans' war-shield works on the same basic principle, doesn’t he? So why shouldn’t this represent a genuine precognition? A glimpse of a technology which will actually exist one day?"
Bragin drummed his fingers rapidly on the arm of his chair, and when he answered it was in a quick, quiet, tight voice.
"If he’s picking up genuine information, it’s possible that he’s milking the brains of some researcher in the present, not the future. From somewhere nearby. Maybe the Krasnoyarsk Institute of Physics---they do space research there. Or maybe further afield, somewhere secret. This might put us all in a highly embarrassing, not to say dangerous position." Bragin tapped his nose meaningfully. "The less said about this possibility, the better. Thankfully it has no relevance to Eric Delko, or to the Tunguska incident."
"I thought," said Igor," that you were trying to get him to forecast the outcome of the bloody movie? Or have we all forgotten that the film has nothing whatsoever to do with bloody Tunguska?"
"He does seem to have gone a bit astray," allowed Bragin.
Igor guffawed. "Well, at least he’s consistent! Astray in the past, astray in the future."
"You must agree it’s a fascinating case."
"Is that what you're calling it now?"
"Now, don’t you go blaming me!" said Arthur. "I was doing my best to focus on The Curious Journey of Mr. Eric Delko. Honest! But my own personal film speeded up incredibly---and suddenly I was Milan Adamavich instead. Chatting up my luscious, prosaic Astrogator, whom I happen to be married to."
"Did you say, 'my own personal film?'" Tisha asked him.
"It’s difficult to say. As far as I’m concerned, this hypnosis business feels just like watching a film---but acting in it at the same time, if you get my drift. I’m watching myself act, but from inside."
"Nobody blames you," Diana assured him. How could Art possibly regard her as prosaic? If he could only know the hot flashes of confusion which had assaulted her the night before, and which she had nobly overcome.
Hot flashes indeed! She rebuked herself. I’m behaving like a fatuous provincial wife, straight out of Delko's life and times, about to ruin herself in some idiotic love affair!
There was a cursory knock at the double door, and immediately Alex stepped into the room.
"Now what?" demanded Tisha.
"I just thought you comrade might like to know our phone is dead. Must be the snow, eh?"
"What's that got to do with you?" Tisha's face reddened. "Were you calling someone?"337Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlXGd9zRlnd
Oleg looked blank. "I was not, sir. I just picked up the phone to dust it, and I noticed there was no dial tone."
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