Читать книгу Antakarana. Quest in Reality - Татьяна Шуклина - Страница 25

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I can hardly breathe when we return to the rest of the players. Thirsty tongue sticks to the palate. The wetsuit wicks moisture away from the body, but sweat flows from the forehead in three streams and is poured into the eyes and behind the collar.

Runner and Joleo are already in place. Runner makes a caustic comment to us, but I ignore it. We describe our discovery – an impressive size open grotto with three dark tunnels and only two lanterns to explore. This means that we will not be able to check all three cave passages at the same time.

Joleo reports that at the end of the path he explored, the corridor narrows, leaving a narrow dark hole. Where it leads is hard to say. Firstly, you can get into it only by moving on all fours, and secondly, you need to crawl, apparently, for a long time. Therefore, Runner and Joleo returned to make a joint decision.

«The hole may be a way out, but in case it’s just a dead end – we are lost», Planck is thinking aloud.

«No no no!» Yu suddenly shouts, «This cannot be a way out! I will never go there for anything in the world! Three tunnels are three chances. Do you hear? We have more opportunities to get out of these damn caves if we follow Alex’s path», the girl squats and starts sobbing uncontrollably. BeBe hugs her shoulders:

«Yu is right», she supports her friend, «according to the theory of probability, we have more chances with three outputs than with one».

Alex is doing a small vote. Everyone raises their hands in favor. The prospect of being in a dark narrow corridor in a cave gradually filled with water can drive even the most persistent crazy.

«Wait!» everyone turns to Martha, «it seems to me that we are missing something extremely important».

«What exactly?» Runner snaps, «Now is not the time for philosophical reflection. Are there specific proposals – go ahead!»

«Let her tell,» Blonda interrupts impatiently.

«I don’t know for sure»…

«And you’d better know», Runner gets up and walks in the direction from where Alex and I just came running.

«It’s just illogical. We advance at random, which is not the case in a good quest».

«We aren’t in a „good“ quest. This is an incomprehensible game of some sick perverts who lured us into a wormhole», Alex objects.

«And yet, my intuition suggests that we don’t notice something, something obvious»…

I stare at Martha in amazement. Now that she has voiced this thought out loud, I understand that all this time I have been thinking about the same thing. She’s right, something is wrong here. Until that moment, despite the danger and cruelty of the assignments, there was an iron logic behind everything. Now it is slipping away from us somewhere further and further…

«We have no time for speculation. Stop banging around irrelevant», Runner demands. And to confirm his words the voice is heard again:

«Until the flooding of the cave system remains: three hours and thirty minutes.»

«I just… No, nothing. Let’s start,» Martha brushes aside, and without further discussion, we head towards the three dark tunnels Alex found.