There was another pause.
“I’m David,” said the waist-wet young man, nodding in encouragement. “I guess I’m the only one here willingly.”
Jean-Pierre looked at him with incomprehension, and then glared at him.
“I’m on vacation here,” as if apologizing, David said. “And this is Yulia, she is from Russia.”
Yulia smiled at David and nodded, picking up the phrase.
“I’m from Russia, I work in Roscosmos,” she smiled warmly at Debby and then caught two heavy looks on her face.
Dr Capri looked at her a little disappointed, and Jean-Pierre almost opened his mouth in amazement.
“Really?!” Jean-Pierre got turned on. “Roscosmos?! Tell me what’s going on here!” he looked at the doctor and seemed ready to attack him.
Dr Capri calmly looked into the Frenchman’s eyes and turned to Debby.
“My name is Dr Capri, you may call me Tulu-Manchi,” he held out his hand to Debby and shook it. “You’re feeling better now, there’s no doubt about it. And perhaps we should get to what’s going on here.”
He turned to Jean-Pierre, thought for a moment, choosing where to begin, and told him everything that had happened to him and Yulia in the last few days. He began with Kathmandu, how they had detected some incomprehensible signal, how they had figured out what the message was. He told how they had gone on a search with the military. How the meeting with David took place. The Englishman added to the doctor’s story how his cell phone went crazy and stunned him. Then Tulu-Manchi shared how they had all seen the plane crash together and how its tail section surprisingly slowly fell to the ground and the main hull disappeared in the sky. Dr Capri ended how they rushed with the military to the fallen wreckage, realizing that there might be people there.
“It all happened,” the doctor looked at Debby, “and we met you.”
“Yes,” Yulia said. “The signal we found at the observatory, David’s phone, the helicopter crash, and your plane crash,” looking at Debby, Yulia said. “It’s all the same thing. It’s all connected to a signal whose source is somewhere around here.”
David sat on the floor and shook his head, unable to understand how the signal made him come here. He thought of Yulia and the doctor trying to find the source of the anomaly, Debby and Jean-Pierre had not come here of their own free will, but he had come himself. He came here on purpose, and he didn’t understand why it was so important to him.