Free Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts

the caf’ table and stood. He made his way ponderously to the door, turned, and stood motionless beside it.
    ‘He’s well trained,’ I observed.
    ‘Listen!’ said Frenkel, urgently. ‘If I were to say to you that I have proof that aliens are amongst us, that would be a big enough secret. But if I were to say to you . . . the aliens are here, and I have proof, and they - they - they are appearing exactly as we wrote them, in that dacha in the 1940s on Comrade Stalin’s express order - what then? Because only you and I , in the whole world, know about that fiction!’
    ‘If you were to say that?’ I observed. ‘And if I were to find it hard to credit?’
    ‘But it’s true . How would you explain it?’
    ‘I’m not sure what you’re asking me to explain.’
    I glanced at Trofim, by the door. He stood unnaturally still, like a robot with the power supply switched off. The three of us were the only people in the restaurant; a fact which struck me, for the first time, as very peculiar. A central Moscow restaurant, at the end of a working day? Shouldn’t it be crowded with people? The windows were black, as if the sun had given up on the day and sulked off. The clock on the wall showed four in the afternoon, but it felt much later. I felt suddenly exhausted. Ready for bed. This tiredness gave me a little push of inner annoyance. ‘This whole conversation,’ I announced, ‘is most idiotic.’
    ‘The truth sometimes is.’
    ‘Let’s be clear,’ I said. ‘The six of us concocted that story of space aliens.’
    ‘We did.’
    ‘We didn’t base it on anything factual at all. We invented radiation aliens. Crazy, really. I don’t believe a single one of us even approximately understood the physics of radiation.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    ‘It was fiction. It was our fiction. We made it up. It’s not real.’
    ‘Fictional and unreal are not synonyms,’ said Frenkel, smiling as if he had articulated a piece of profound wisdom.
    ‘Ivan, you’re saying that the story we invented is somehow, I don’t know, happening in the real world? That there’s proof that radiation aliens are invading?’
    ‘There is! There’s evidence!’
    ‘Then the evidence is hoaxed. It is fictional. Maybe somebody has found out about our plan, and is going to the trouble to reproduce it in the real world.’
    ‘But why should they?’
    ‘I’ve no idea. I’ve really no idea.’
    ‘More to the point, how could they know ? Only you and I know, in the whole world!’
    ‘As to that,’ I said. ‘I assume somebody kept a record. It must be filed somewhere.’
    ‘It isn’t.’
    ‘How can you be sure?’
    ‘I know because I’ve looked. I have access to those sorts of files, and it’s not there. And anyway, who would file it?’
    ‘Malenkov?’ I suggested.
    ‘Him? He didn’t keep records of anything at all! Secrecy was his whole life . He didn’t even keep a diary. No, not him. And none of us, none of the writers concerned, we wouldn’t have the chance, even if we wanted to. No records!’
    ‘Then no records were kept. It’s only in our memories, yours and mine. And therefore, unless we are capable of shaping the real world with our mental fantasies - perfectly unconsciously, in my case - any resemblance between our story and the real world is merely coincidental.’
    ‘I have proof!’
    ‘Jan,’ I said. ‘You’ve come across certain reports of UFO activity, and you fancy a resemblance between those reports and that ridiculous story we concocted years ago. But its coincidence. It must be. The resemblance is pure chance.’
    ‘Radiation aliens,’ he hissed. ‘Listen: do you remember the American spaceship that exploded?’
    ‘Last month, you mean? That was in the news. What was it called?’
    ‘[ Challenger ,]’ he said in English. Then: ‘It means Aggressor !’
    ‘It was a launchpad malfunction, I believe.’
    ‘That’s what they’re saying, of course that’s what they’re saying. But I have seen