I glimpsed at Enembe. He was looking distressed and anxious, and he often becomes unpolite and personal in such a mood. So I tried to make sure that he did not have much time to start complaining.
- Khorixas, listen, I said quickly and looked at him intensively, demanding his full attention. - We came last night around midnight, and we did not see a single soul in this village. The snow on the streets was intact implying that nobody has been here for four days. Your house was dark and empty, and we broke in from the balcony door. Can you tell what you saw and did last night?
Khorixas was first smiling like I was telling a joke, but his smile vanished when he saw Enembe's serious face and my look. He picked a spoon from the table and turned it around in his hands, not looking up for a while. He sighed but didn't say anything. Before Enembe had time to say anything, I continued.
- Please Khorixas, look at me. We are all confused, but something strange is going on here. We must stick together and figure out what's going on. Just tell your version of this.
- OK, he said and put the spoon down. - You came to my door around ten thirty last night. You said you had had to come earlier than planned because you had made an important discovery from the Floating Rocks. You had caught it on video, and you came to send a copy to your headquarters to further analysis. But you were pretty tired, so you just went to bed and promised to tell more about it in the morning.
- Well we did not come for that and we didn't discover anything about Floating Rocks and that is not what...
- Stop Enembe, let me talk. This is important, I interrupted. Enembe was surprised about my unusually commanding voice, and he shut up and lowered his index finger that he had been shaking in front of his face during his yelp. - Now Khorixas, we did go to the Floating Rocks and we did get something on video, yes Enembe we did, let me talk (he was about to say something but insted put his hand back on the table and remained silent), but that is not why we are here. Did we say anything specific about the thing on the video?
- You said it was an object, maybe some kind of machine that was moving in the air above the ground. It was near the Rocks but then it disappeared behind a hill and you didn't see it ever since.
- Did it leave any prints on the snow, I asked.
- No you did not say anything about the snow, but it did not leave prints on the ground.
- Enembe, I did see something there, near the Rocks, and it did disappear behind a hill and I think that it got recorded, but I just didn't have time to check the recordings because of all other things. It all fits so well to what could have happened and things we could have told Khorixas. How else could he know these things, if even you did not know?
- Things don't fit. We were here only at midnight. We couldn't have been earlier because of the snow.
- Why do you keep talking about snow, interrupted Khorixas. - Is that some kind of a euphemism for trouble?
- Don't you talk about snow here in the village, having the record time of five days of snow on the ground, asked Enembe bitterly. Khorixas's eyes widened.
- We don't have any snow, and haven't had for years if I recall.
We looked at each other in surprise for a second, and then jumped toward the kitchen window and pulled the thin curtains open. The bright sunshine was reflecting from the yellow and reddish rocks and sand of the hills of Ashakati. There was no snow. People on the street were walking and riding just like always.
Enembe let out a cheer, which soon died out on his lips when he realised that this not only meant that we could go back to the hub without worrying about the nasty white stuff, but also that what actually had happen during the last five days became seriously disputed.
We spent the next hour or so talking about any details of events and weather we could recall at the hub and in the village, and it was all very systematically incoherent. We had had record frost and snow, the village experienced just typical local weather for the season, which meant cold nights but comfortably moderate days and cool, starry evenings as the winter was approaching. In the end, Khorixas made a strange summary.
- This is just like a double-slit experiment. You know, when a photon goes through two narrow slits simultaneously, the photon is actually divided into two and behaving like a wave rather than a particle. Now your world went throught the other slit with snow and all related events, and at the same time another wave went through the other slit without snow. I met those of you without snow last night, but now you have hit the detector and your precise location gets determined to the no-snow area.
- That is just crazy nonsense, said Enembe. - Everyone knows that double-slit experiment only applies in quantum physics on particle-size level. The probability functions just collapse when you come to the human size range.
- Crazy of not, it fits the observations, said Khorixas proudly. Falsify it if you can, but until then I am the winner of this scientific competition.
~x~
We were in a hurry already. We thanked Khorixas and left for shopping. We got everything easily, including food suppy and the electric cord. We packed everything on the wheelbarrel. Before heading back, we went to the post office and sent a letter to the headquarters. We did not have the tape from the Floating Rocks, although that would have been really interesting to send to them now that we knew what Khorixas had told us, but we tried to describe the situation as clearly as we could.
Then we headed back to the hub. The soil was hard and easy to ride, so now we could move full speed. I was standing in the back and Enembe was pedaling. We indeed were back to the hub in less than half the time we spent going to the village.
We went into the hub and unloaded the food to the fridge and cupboards. Life was looking good again, the weather being back to the nice moderate climate. We checked all equipment and noticed that all was OK. The solar panels were a bit dusty so we brushed those. Then we went inside to prepare dinner.
Svetlana did not show up from the field work before six, which was our dinner time. At nine, we got worried. It was dark already, and we had now idea about where to look for her if need be. So, we just had to trust that everything was okay and/or she could solve any problems herself.
The morning came, and there was no sign of Svetlana. So, we reorganised our schedule so that we would go through as many field areas with minimum time for only the most critical measurements. That would maximise our probability to meet her without causing much trouble to our measurement campaigns. We went first to the Floating Rocks, and everything there was like it used to be. We shot a short video only, and we paid specific attention to the surrounding, but there were no machines, floating or otherwise.
Then we checked the outer fields. Our plants were doing fine. The gene modifications applied actually did help the plants with water balance, so there was hope that these crops could help us turn deserts int useful arable land - at least to some extent.
On our way back we decided to check the desert badger's nest. It was a rare species, so although it was not in our study protocol, Svetlana might be there making observations. She was not there.
Also, there was no badger. The hole was on the ground, but there were no footprints or any signs of active life. We did not have our rover with us, I took a camera and ducked into the hole for the first few meters to get some pictures from inside. It was clearly inihabited, and had been for a while.
We were back at the hub only a few minutes before seven. Svetlana was still not there. We started to prepare for dinner, when we heard that the door was opened and someone was dragging something big in the corridor. Finally! But was was she carrying with her?
It was not Svetlana. It was Ismen, and he was carrying his whole portable limnology laboratory with him.
- Hi guys, he said. - I came back earlier, because my liquid chromatogram broke down. But I have seven days' worth of great data from the Parallel Rivers.
______________
Your topic is Trapped.
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