Chapter 7

"They're still down there," Ariana told Arnim, "she's not getting out of the car!"

"So?" he replied, "go down and pull her out if it bothers you."

"I can't, I don't want to humiliate her. Besides, I'm not dressed."

"No," he grinned.

"Don't you think 13's too young to be having sex?"

"Are they? They could be just talking. How do you know they're having sex?"

"C'mon?" Ariana told him, looking back with her 'old fashioned' expression, "Rica and her boyfriend, parked in a car for an hour and 'just talking?"

"They could have much to talk about?"

"In your time," she asked, "do girls so young have sex?"

"I suppose some did," he considered, "I recall talk about teenage pregnancies and unprotected sex and so forth. Certainly I remember girls who were willing and parents who allowed their teenagers to sleep together under the family roof."

"I guess, I do to," she agreed. Ariana looked back from the window at Arnim, naked, lying on his back, with his semi erect penis in his hand. "What a beautiful man!" she sighed. She clutched her loose wrap around her body and retreated from the window. "So, how are you, how's your dick?"

"Recovering slowly," he laughed, "and you? How's your kitty?"

"Same... full of your goo."

Arnim's hand fell from his cock, which flopped between his legs. "Keep doing that?" Ariana breathed, "I kinda like watching you do that."

"Really?" he grinned, "I just like watching you; even doing the laundry!"

"Oh yeah?" she laughed, "and here's me thinking you were supervising."

"Hey?" Arnim looked at her with a sly expression, "flash me?"

"Pervert!" she replied, giggling, "only if you grab yourself again."

"Like this?" taking himself in hand once more.

"Yeah! Top or bottom?"

"Both... top first."

Ariana pulled aside the wrap to release one of her breasts. "Mmm?"

"Now the other?" She slowly pulled out her other breast, playing with her nipple so it stood out. Arnim clicked in approval and stroked himself until he was stiff. Next, Ariana showed him her pussy, combing through her thick hair with her fingers. "God! You're sexy!"

She bent down and kissed him before climbing on the bed next to him. "Wanna race?" she asked, teasing her clit with her middle finger. "Who comes first wins."

"And what's the prize?"

"Hmm, ok! If you come first... then I'll let you do me over the basin in the morning. I know that turns you on"

"And if you come?"

"Then you've got to wake me up with your tongue... here!" she indicated her pussy. "Deal?"

"Sounds fair. But no cheating, ok? No faking orgasms."

"As if?" she laughed, "at least I'll know if you're being honest!"

"Put a pillow at the other end of the bed and face me, ok?"

Ariana made herself comfortable, placing a foot each side of Arnim's body. He arranged his legs so they had a good view of what each other was doing.

"Count... one, two..." she smiled, placing her hand between her legs.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Ariana's sister, Ella, returned to her room with a couple of beers for herself and Fuller. The German Flight Engineer was sitting up, smoking.

"Mom and Dad will smell that," she chided.

"Sorry, thoughtless," he apologised.

Ella took it from his fingers and dragged on it before handing it back. "Rica's still out there with that guy," she reported, "been almost an hour!" Wearing her baggy men's T-shirt, she slipped in beside him. "Hope she's got protection, boys never think of it. I keep telling her, 'Sis, you're the one left carrying the kid'."

"Um, by the way..."

"Yeah, of course I'm on the pill," she laughed, "see? My point exactly. And you're probably more responsible than most men. And experienced!" she grinned, "very experienced!"

"I don't get it," he sighed, "this must have happened, and yet?"

"'And yet, ' what?"

"I don't know how all this fits together. I know where I'll be in twenty years time, but what happens in between time? I can't get out of my head that I'm supposed to do something; that we all are supposed to be doing something. I don't believe this was an accident. I believe we've all been sent back for a reason."

"Sent back? By whom? God?"

"I don't know. Maybe you and I were supposed to hook up for a reason?"

"To screw? That seems a good enough reason to me."

"Maybe you're just a perk? A side dish, perhaps?"

"Fuck you, Fuller! I'm no-one's 'side dish'."

"I didn't mean..."

"Of course you meant it. You think I'm some kind of slut?"

"No, I..."

"Get something straight," she told him, angrily, "I sleep with who I want. That doesn't mean I'm a slut or anyones fucking 'side dish'!"

"Perhaps my English wasn't perfect," he tried to explain, "it didn't come out right!"

Ella rolled over onto him, placing a knee each side. She sat on his stomach and placed her hands on his shoulders. "You're fulla shit, Fuller," she broke out giggling, "your English is better than mine. But you're a good fuck and a really nice body, so maybe I'll hang onto you for a while. I don't know what the fuck you're here for or what you're meant to do. Frankly, I couldn't give a shit either. You're my pal, Fuller, with privileges. What else do you need to understand?"

He looked up to her pretty face, just inches from his own. "I'm acting like a teenager, aren't I? With all the self-doubt and angst..."

"Nah, you're just acting like a guy!" she lowered her face and kissed him. She squirmed her bottom down until she made contact with the tip of his cock. "Fuller, you hard again?" He shrugged in mock apology before pulling her down.

They heard a car door slam in the distance. "She's finished?" Fuller murmured into Ella's ear.

"Longest blow job in history?" she whispered back.

"Clearly a family tradition!"

Upstairs, Ariana growled in frustration. "Unfair," she cried, breathless, "my little sister put me off at the last moment. I demand a rematch!"

"And that would be fair?" Arnim panted, "I need recovery time, this is tiring."

"Anyway, Rica's home now. Dad will relax."

"Your Father relax? he laughed, "how can the poor man relax with all this going on under his roof? I'd be in a state of permanent nervous tension."

"Anyway, Arnim, I think we need to talk."

"About what?"

"About us. I think it's time."

Reiner Kurzbach watched Marina as she emerged from the shower. 'At least, ' he thought, 'I can be sure she's not rigged with microphones.' She was surprisingly well-designed underneath her layers of Winter clothing. Her breasts were large but with little sag. She had the flat stomach of someone who worked out regularly and the suppleness that went with it.

Marina was probably in her early thirties and, Kurzbach thought, was or had been, military. She'd told him she was employed by the Soviet Institute of Sciences as an Administrator, but no-one here seemed entirely what they claimed to be.

Ongarchuk may be a science town but Reiner was sure it was run by the KGB. Too many men and women strutted around, ramrod straight, with a military precision. They all seem to have cold grey eyes that scanned him as if trying to read his mind.

But to keep one's sanity in this miserable, isolated, joyless place required the switching off of certain parts of the brain, he decided. Only a reclusive zombie would find Ongarchuk to their liking.

Most of the rationals, here, soaked themselves in alcohol at the close of their shifts. President Gorbachev had, the previous year, imposed severe restrictions on vodka and wine, trying, it seems, to get to grips with the Soviet Union's debilitating alcoholism problem. But little of that restriction seemed to have reached Ongarchuk. Perhaps the President had visited here, he thought, and made an exception?

He recalled that the German press had reported extensively and gleefully on the slow disintegration of the Soviet Union. As a 33 year old professional pilot, he'd read in detail how, in 1989, Gorbachev had repudiated the 'Brezhnyev doctrine.' That doctrine had authorised the use of the Soviet Group of Forces in Europe to 'retore order' in Russia's vassal states. Like testing the waters, sceptical it seemed at the time, Hungary and Czechoslovakia had initiated 'orange revolutions' looking over their shoulders for the rumble of Soviet tanks. When those tanks failed to appear, other countries followed. It was remarkable as scarcely a shot was fired. Only in Romania was any resistance offered by the state apparatus.

By 1986, however, Gorbachev was desperately trying to revive a moribund economy. Oil exploration and extraction in Siberia required an astronomical amount of investment. Vodka restrictions had removed 300 Billion Roubles from the State's coffers. Industry throughout the Soviet Union needed investment to modernise if they were to compete with the West. The State was chronically short of cash and reneged on a number of trade deals.

Gorbachev needed Western investment and budgetry cuts to State spending. In 1986 he began stacking the Politburo with his own candidates from the reformist 'Komsomol Discussion Circles.' Fortunately, many of the existing encumbents were nearing retirement age.

The military, Kurzbach recalled, supported the President's efforts. They wanted out of Afghanistan, seeing little prospect of a military victory. The military wanted a reproachement with America as Reagan's 'Star Wars' project was causing them sleepless nights. Most of all they wanted to stop the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Gorbachev had assured them that it wouldn't happen, envisaging a system of 'free association' rather than centralised control.

'Irony, ' he mused, 'makes fools of us all.'

The possibility of an attack by time machine was another cause for indigestion among the top Soviet military leadership. Imagine what mayhem may be caused by saboteurs with knowledge of the possible run of future events?

'But, ' thought Kurzbach, 'the social and political evolution of humankind was inevitable. Could the assassination, say, of one future leader cancel out the future? Would Nazism have happened without Adolf Hitler? Or the Soviet Union without Lenin and Stalin? Would these things have happened anyway with different personalities?' Kurzbach thought that social trends were next to impossible to alter because of the complicated interlocking mechanisms that dictate change.

Military prospects, on the other hand, could be significantly improved with knowledge of defeats and victories. If the Soviet Army knew what a noose it was putting around its neck in Afghanistan would they've invaded? The Mujahideen, then, would have been left to squabble among themselves with no motivation for broad unity. With no cause, would Al Qaeda have cemented a power base? All this was beyond Kurzbach's analysis.

Professor Sumilov had accepted the future break up of the Soviet Union. Kurzbach knew it the moment he started asking questions about salaries paid to top research scientists in the West. Obviously, Sumilov was already looking at his options, once Ongarchuk was closed down.

His 'interrogation' continued, however, the Professor often accompanied by one or two intelligence officers. Reiner told them the 'time research laboratory' was to be constructed in Frankfurt, West Germany. Kurzback picked an empty industrial site near where he was brought up. He knew a glue factory would be built there in the early nineties. It amused him to think of dozens of KGB agents observing its construction.

Marina had been something of a fringe benefit. In Ongarchuk, there was little to do once a shift was over except get drunk and have affairs. She'd come to see him one evening, with a bottle of passable Hungarian wine. She tottered a little on the door step and Kurzbach brought her inside before she keeled over.

She was bombed, and Kurzbach laid her out on the sofa. In the early hours of the morning she'd got into bed with him. When he woke a little later, she was fumbling with him and her urgent pussy was rubbing against his thigh.

It had been some kind of erotic wrestling match. Marina was enthusiastic and desperate in her lovemaking as though it was the furfillment of some life's dream. Although Kurzbach hadn't slept with a woman for some five years, he found himself accepting the assault with little coaxing.

Marina was an attractive woman and he'd been wondering why she was stuck way out here. Surely her beauty and wiles could've landed some comfortable Government job in more hospitable surroundings? Even a relatively lavish salary seemed to him poor compensation for a stalled career path and isolation.

She gave little away, however, as they talked that morning in bed. Her Father worked for the Government, she explained, but didn't everyone in the Soviet Union? Her Mother was a senior translator for 'Intourist.' Yes, she had a younger brother and here she came close to being open with him. Her brother was in the air force and serving 'Down South.' Reiner knew that euphemism meant Afghanistan. He flew attack helicopters and Kurzbach recalled there'd been a high attrition rate in the war.

"In three years it will be all over and your brother will be staying home," he told her.

She took some comfort from his words and asked if he could get him a safe job flying commercial aircraft. Kurzbach promised he'd do all he could, but she couldn't tell him whether her brother had a fixed wing rating.

"You could train him?" she urged, as if converting from an Mi-24 to a Boeing 747 was a matter of a few circuits of the airfield.

"Sure," he replied, "I'll do all I can."

Like Sumilov, Marina had accepted that the Soviet Union's time was shortly up. Like the professor, too, she was beginning to revue her options for the future.