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