"Aleksandr Abramov, Sergei Abramov. Horsemen from Nowhere ("ВСАДНИКИ НИОТКУДА", англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

witchcraft." I wound up getting angrier all the time. "Who was first to wake
up? I was. And who first saw two tractors? Me again."
"Why two?" he asked suddenly.
That's when I began to laugh triumphantly. My priority was now complete
and confirmed.
"For the simple reason that there is another one alongside it. The real
one. Take a look."
He pressed against the side window and, perplexed, looked at me. Then
without a word he put on a copy of my jacket and went out onto the ice. The
identically welded piece of tread and the identically bent glass of the
window made him frown. Cautiously, he looked into the entrance way, went on
into the navigator's room and then returned to the table with my camera. He
even examined it.
"A real sister," he said gloomily.
"As you see, she and I were born a bit earlier."
"All you did was wake up earlier," he added frowning, "and no one knows
which one of us is the real one. Actually, I do know."
"Suppose he's right, after all?" I thought to myself. "Just suppose the
duplicate and phantom are not he at all, but me? After all, who can
determine a thing like that if our fingernails have the same markings and
our schoolmates are the same? Even our thoughts are duplicated, even
feelings if the stimuli from without are the same."
We looked at each other as if into a mirror. Just imagine a thing like
that happening!
"You know what I'm thinking about right now?" he said suddenly.
"Yes, I do," I answered. "Let's see."
I knew what he was thinking, because I was thinking about the very same
thing. If there are two tractors on the ice and it is not known which of
them fell into the crack in the ice, then why are the same windows in both
broken? And if both of them fell through, how did they get out?
We stopped our conversation and both ran to the opening in the ice
crust. We stretched out on the ice and crawled right up to the edge of the
precipice, and then all was clear. Only one of the machines had fallen in
because there was only one set of tracks. It had got caught about three
metres from the edge of the precipice, between the two walls that came close
together at this point. We could also see little steps made in the ice
probably by Vano or Zernov, depending on who succeeded first in getting to
the surface. This obviously meant that the second "Kharkovchanka" machine
appeared already after the fall of the first. But then who pulled the first
one out? It couldn't get out of the crevice by itself definitely.
I took another glance into the precipice. It was black, deep, menacing
and bottomless. I picked up a piece of ice that had broken off the edge-
probably a chunk knocked out by the hack used to cut the steps-and tossed it
down. It straightway vanished from view but I did not hear any sound of its
hitting something. Then an idea flashed through my mind: maybe give this
fellow-duplicate of mine a push? Run up to him and trip him into the
precipice?...
"Don't think you'll be able to do it," he said.
I was dumbfounded at first and only later caught on.
"You were thinking of the same thing?" "Of course."