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

diamond-like snow, as if there had not been any accident at all.
But my memory persisted and the headache I had was definitely real. In
the mirror I could see caked blood on my forehead. I probed around a bit and
found that the bone was all right, only the skin had been cut by the edge of
the camera. This meant that something had indeed taken place. Maybe
everybody was nearby in the snow? I looked in the drying room for the sky
clamps: there were no skis. Also absent were the duraluminum emergency
sleighs. All the jackets and caps, except mine, had vanished. I opened the
door and jumped down onto the ice. It was bluish and bright under the slight
layer of fluffy snow that the wind was blowing every which way. Zernov was
right when he spoke of the mysteriously thin layer of snow in the deep
interior of the polar continent.
Of a sudden, everything became clear. Right next to our "Kharkovchanka"
vehicle was another one, big and red and all covered with snow. It had
obviously caught up with us from Mirny or was on its way to Mirny. And it
had helped us out of our trouble. That was it. Our tractor had fallen into a
crevasse: about ten metres from here I could see the tracks going downwards,
then the dark opening of a well with a firn-like crust covering the crack.
The boys from the other tractor had probably seen our fall, which most
likely had been a lucky one in which we had got caught in the mouth of the
fissure, and had pulled us and the machine out.
"Hello, there, anybody in the. tractor?" I yelled and went around the
front end.
There was not a single face in any one of the four windows and no voice
at all. I began to study the other machine and found that our sister vehicle
had exactly the same bent-in glass in the front window. Then I looked at the
left-hand tread. Our machine had a clear-cut mark: one of the steel cleats
had been welded on and therefore differed definitely from the others. Now
this tread had the same tell-tale mark. These were no twins from the same
factory but duplicates that repeated every single detail. Opening the door
of the other machine, the duplicate, I trembled fearing the worst.
True enough. The entrance passage was empty, no skis, no sleighs, only
my fur jacket hanging on the hook. My jacket, that was it: torn and with
sewn-up left-hand sleeve, the fur worn off the cuffs and two dark oily spots
on the shoulder-I had once picked it up with oily fingers. I entered the
cabin in haste and fell against the wall so as not to collapse, for my heart
was about to stop.
On the floor, near the table, in a brown shirt and padded trousers,
with face against the leg of the table and dried up blood on the forehead
and one hand holding onto the camera was ME.
Was this a dream? I had not yet awakened? I was looking at myself by a
second vision? I pinched the skin on my hand. It hurt. It was clear that I
was awake and not sleeping. Well, then I must have gone crazy. But from
books I had read I knew that mad people never realize they have gone mad.
Then what is this all about? Hallucinations? A mirage? I touched the wall;
it was real enough. That meant that I myself was not an apparition, a
phantom lying consciousless at my own feet. Sheer madness. I recalled the
words of the mysterious snow maiden. Then maybe, after all, there is a snow
maiden, and miracles do happen, and phantom duplicates of people, and
science is simply nonsense and self-consolation.