Read Online Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts - Free Book Online Page B

and his small eyes became an even smaller portion of his big face. They were like an umlaut over the fat U of his nose. The jaws of his mind chewed over this indigestible statement. He did not look happy.
    ‘I’ll tell you what I think,’ Frenkel said. ‘I think you don’t believe UFOs are real. Am I right?’
    ‘A rhetorical question?’
    ‘I’d hazard the guess,’ Frenkel persevered, ‘that you’re a materialist . Right?’
    ‘Do you mean a dialectical materialist?’ I returned, affecting an innocent expression.
    ‘Comrade Frenkel wants to know if you . . .’ boomed Trofim; but Frenkel’s hand was on his forearm.
    ‘Don’t worry too much about what Comrade Skvorecky says,’ he advised the fellow, and I found myself wondering about the exact nature of their relationship. What was Trofim to Frenkel? His bodyguard ? His minder? His jailer ?
    ‘Ever since I’ve known him,’ said Frenkel, ‘Comrade Skvorecky has been an ironist. That’s a fair description, no?’
    ‘It has an ironic aptness,’ I replied, trying to scratch an itch inside the scar tissue on my face.
    A mosquito had bitten me on the back of my neck.
    It was the strangest thing.
    Something was not right about that bite.
    ‘But even an ironist may have sincere beliefs about some things,’ Frenkel was saying. ‘He may, for example, harbour a suspicion that the cosmos is so vast - so unimaginably vast - that humanity cannot be the only sentient creature to inhabit it. Skvorecky here used to write science fiction,’ he added.
    ‘As did you,’ I reminded him.
    He flapped his right hand. ‘Keep that to yourself, please,’ he said. ‘That’s not something I like to boast about. Particularly in my present job. But you haven’t answered my question! Put it this way: do you think there’s a reasonable possibility that UFOs might be - real ?’
    ‘Do you?’
    ‘That’s just it! If you’d asked me a decade ago I’d have said no . I mean, I’d have said: If you sift through all the sightings, and you filter out the hoaxers and the fantasists, the sleepwalkers and the drunks, the over-imaginative people who go to bed having watched It Came From Jupiter on the television, filter out the suggestible and the idiotic, the people who can’t tell the difference between a commercial airliner and a spacecraft from Sirius Minor, then there would only be a few left, and those few could be described as honestly mistaken. But . . . But! But!’
    ‘But?’
    He lowered his voice. ‘Something major is happening . We’re right in the middle of it. It’s happening now. I’m no UFO cultist. By nature I’m a sceptic. But things have been passing over my desk that can’t be explained away. There’s been proof . It’s more than just long-distance lorry drivers seeing lights in the sky outside Irkutsk. It’s - it’s real.’
    ‘How exciting,’ I said, in an unexcited voice.
    ‘I don’t expect you to believe me right off, of course,’ said Frenkel. He sat back in his chair. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you at all. It’s highly secret. It has galvanised the highest levels of government, I can tell you that. It’s big. I, personally, have spoken to the General Secretary himself about it.’
    ‘How exciting,’ I said again. ‘To meet the General Secretary,’ I added, for the benefit of Trofim’s scowling expression.
    ‘Now, just listen for a moment,’ Frenkel said. ‘You’re the only person in the entire world I can have this conversation with. Do you understand that? Because you and I have shared a unique experience.’
    ‘Does Comrade Trofim know our secret?’
    ‘I trust Trofim,’ said Frenkel. Trofim sat up more straightly in his chair. But Frenkel immediately added, ‘Comrade, would you mind going and standing over by the door?’
    ‘The door?’ replied the huge fellow.
    ‘Just for five minutes. I have something personal to discuss with my old friend.’
    A little awkwardly, Trofim extracted his treetrunk legs from beneath