orth again. And he was aware of all this, with no sign of fainting. His head was ringing clearly, and this ringing clarity was thrown from side to side.
He waited. The panic of the five senses subsided with his eyes shut. Signals from the periphery appeared: “It's wet!”, they informed him. He opened one eye and immediately saw a prehistoric bennettite flower on its stalk, bent in front of his nose. Vadim shook himself up. With one eye open, somehow the head wasn't spinning.
He was sitting in the thickets of Wollemi, his last “flare” was giving off smoke in front of him, dirty gauze strips were hanging on a stems of strange grasses, including his own, the clean one with the ball, wet with drool. There were also a few rusty nuts thrown by Alex the Aspirant. The sun was pressing from above, it was sweltering, the air was bitter, and one had to literally drink it, rather than inhale, so dense it was.
– July 14, 64, 765, 563, 122 BC, – said Mumbler aloud, without hiding. Not two hundred million, but also nice. Please shave, like dad said.
Vadim looked around. Behind him was a pile of some kind of a fern, from which some kind of bamboo tree protruded. Not bamboo. Dinosaur-like, with scales. On the left, in an Ilex's embrasures, which was not focusing in the eyes, glistened either a hairy lake or a Savannah, simply flooded with water. Everything was sparkling unbearably, everything was wet, everywhere were rainbows. On the right there were impenetrable bushes. Not bushes. Something green and impenetrable. The Lost World, the “black” Conan Doyle in eight volumes. All this did not interest Vadim; he had already come to his senses. He was interested in the way out. From here, from this side nothing clearly indicated the time hole, but even in this heat there was a feeling of heavy chill on the sweaty back, cold from the Zone. The hole was there and the hole was open. Vadim was surprised: the temperature difference was very high, dozens of degrees, there must be steam, it should be steaming like bath doors in winter. But there was no steam. Vadim looked at his wet dirty hands. Seemed like he was sitting in the puddle. The ground under his ass was deeply slushy, saturated with wet humus; brown water flooded the dents from his palms right before his eyes. Something buzzed past his face like a slow bullet, Vadim twitched the head away. His vision still could not cope with the general focus, the huge green sunny world fell on its side every time he opened the second eye, the dizziness was still there, as strong as ever… Something in the stomach slurped loudly and gave a nasty taste in his mouth; but it pleased him. “Now I am going to vomit”, thought Vadim, “And it will become easier, as on the “neutral” with the first “kiss”. Yes, yes, it is already getting easier.”