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

What was there to do? Should I run to the duplicate tractor and wait to
go out of my mind completely? Then I recalled the dictum that if what you
see contradicts the laws of nature, then you are to blame, you err and not
nature. My fear disappeared, only confusion and anger remained. I even gave
the lying man a kick. He moaned and opened his eyes. Then he rose on his
elbow just as I had done and looked around with a dull gaze.
"Where is everybody?" he asked.
I did not recognize the voice-perhaps mine in a tape-recording. But he
was really me, this phantom, if he thought exactly the way I had when I
regained consciousness!
"Where are they?" he repeated and then yelled "Tolya! Dyachuk!" No
response. It had been the same with me.
"What's happened?" he asked.
"I don't know," I answered.
"It seemed to me that the machine fell into a crevasse, and we must
have been knocked about against some wall of ice. I fell... and then...
everything fell. Or did it?"
He did not recognize me.
"Vano!" he cried, rising.
Then silence again. Everything that had occurred fifteen minutes ago
was strangely being repeated. Reeling, he reached the navigator's room and
touched the empty seat of the driver, then he went into the drying room,
found-like I had-that there were no skis or sleighs and then remembered me
and returned.
"Where are you from?" he asked peering at me more intently and suddenly
leapt back covering his face with his hand. "This can't be! What's
happening? Am I asleep?"
"That's exactly what I said... at first," I answered. I was no longer
afraid.
He sat down on the porolone settee.
"Please excuse me, but you look exactly like me, in the mirror. Are you
a spectre?"
"No, you can touch me and find out."
"But then who are you?"
"I'm Yuri Anokhin, the cameraman and radio operator of the expedition,"
I said firmly.
He jumped up.
"No, I am Yuri Anokhin, the cameraman and radio operator of the
expedition," he cried out and sat down again.
Now both of us were silent, examining one another; one was calmer, for
he knew a little bit more and had seen more; the other with a glint of
madness in his eyes, repeating, perhaps, all my thoughts-those that had come
to mind when I had first seen him. Yes, there were two men in this cabin
breathing in the same heavy rhythm- two identical human beings.


Chapter III. THE ROSE CLOUD