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She yawned, allowing him a view of the pink cave of her mouth and beyond, a uvula pressing against an arched tongue like a large clitoris. Her mouth snapped shut. "Can’t you remember?"
Er… I'm afraid it’s all a bit hazy. Well, did we?"
"It seems highly likely we did, since we’re in bed together!" She giggled.
Arthur leaned over her. "Maybe we should jog our memories?"
However, Diana popped out of bed, hauling the sheet around her. "What time is it?"
Arthur saw his watch lying underneath the lamp. "Seven. Smidgen after." Automatically he scooped up the watch and began winding it.
What a dumb thing, to fuss over a watch when there’s a naked woman in the bedroom! Actually, the clockwork watch was a vital link with the real world. A watch was the only means left to them to measure time, when darkness and daylight had both melted into the same amorphous pale mist.
Rolling off the bed, naked, he stood up with an effort and made for the window. Parting the chintz curtains, he inspected the luminous fog: it looked just as empty of content as yesterday. By the time he turned away, and this wasn’t long, Diana somehow had managed to dress herself at top speed. Already she was buttoning up her calico blouse. Thus, from being a hopeful lover, he was transformed into a patient standing stark naked in an exam room, so that the Doctor could diagnose knobby knees, or something. Stubbornly he sat down, still naked, and crossed his legs. Something was nagging at him. 309Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAamrhmmyRs
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Restored to her chainmail, Diana grinned and perched on the bottom of the bed.
"Now that was my idea of a party! All friends together, now. Even Igor. Passed out on the sofa, he did—how theatrical!" She laughed, since she knew for a fact that all artists habitually drank themselves senseless, given half the chance, and succumbed in cold corners, careless of clothes or comfort. " Alex won’t have much to say about, either! Do you remember how he was dancing with Tisha, singing those rude songs?"
"Vaguely." What was nagging at him?
A hazy memory emerged of Diana clinging on for dear life to the banisters, as if they had been a Soviet surveying duo, and the stairs had been the Caucasus. They had crawled upstairs on their hands and knees---hence these bruises on his knees! This involved a good deal of giggly clutching to prevent either person from sliding into crevasses. Once they had scaled the cornice of the landing, he had spotted Alex weaving about below and given warning of the sighting of an Almast, the wild man of the mountains. Huddled on the floor together, they peeped through the rails, terrified of falling down the precipice into his clutches. Camp Six, the Summit, had been his bedroom.
All this slumming about seemed a long time ago. Much more recently than that, he’d…well, he’d been sound asleep.
And dreaming! The redstar Galactica had been falling through time, down towards Siberia! And Eric Saveli had been trekking relentlessly up the Angara River!
These things had happened while he lay in a drunken fugue in bed, with Diana blotto beside him
Suddenly events collapsed into the right order, and he trembled and clenched his teeth. He was possessed, and he knew he couldn’t shake free----not by way of vodka, not by fucking, nor even by sleep. The momentum of events was independent of him now, just as it was independent of Leo, the Master Hypnotist.
"You need to get dressed," Diana said. "You’re shivering."
"Not with cold, no. Diana, the whole thing’s been ploughing on regardless! I remember now: after we fell asleep, I was back in the redstar, and I was up the Angara too. It wasn’t any ordinary dream. Even when I’m unconscious, it’s all carrying on. I can’t stop it---none of us can. Are we all drugged? Is that it, Doctor Kotov? Is this an experiment to disorient people? Are technicians sitting in some basement underneath this building, listening in through microphones and smirking? Are they pumping out that filthy fog? What is it: clouds of mind-gas?"
"It certainly isn’t my experiment! It isn’t Leonid's, either, or he wouldn’t have got so drunk. No, of course it’s not an experiment.
"Then what is it?"
"Time has come adrift. Because…...because it has." That’s when Diana looked torn between bursting into tears and coming to mother him. "We’re trapped in a time-bubble---like a soap bubble. That’s why we couldn’t leave this place yesterday. We just walked around the inside of a bubble. Outside of the bubble it’s…...1880, or 2060, I don’t know."
"And this bubble will pop when I reach Tunguska?"
"It’s got to, Arthur. The world will spring back." She smiled wryly. "Meanwhile, we’re still alive. You, in particular, we’re very lively."
"Thank you for telling me!"
"You’d better get clothes on---I’m starving." Diana squirmed. "Actually, I’ll go and get washed first."
"Are we really alive, like other people?"
She made an uncertain gesture and fled from his bedroom.
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