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."You'd want to reestablish the nerve connections, first thing, then get in a supply of protein to build up the muscle tissue.I don't expect you could do very much about the bones at this late date, perhaps add an inch or two onto them, but I don't see getting a really accurate match with the other arm.""You can do this?" the Kaiser whispered."Well, yes." Dark looked surprised."We Captains have got to be ready to maintain all sorts of equipment, and that naturally includes the people on the team.There wouldn't be much point, would there, in having your ship in good order if the crew got bent or broken or something? Mind you," he added, "most of my stuffs on the ocean bottom with Wanderer, so I couldn't do you a brand-new arm or anything like that.But I do have what you might call a first-aid kit in my gear, and that should be enough to let me do a sort of makeshift repair job like that.If you wouldn't object to the trouble, it'd take about three of your days, I'd say—and it would be rather a treat," he added wistfully, "to get back in practice again.I get this feeling that I'm going stale without something to do."Ari and I found it quite amusing that someone who valued precision so highly as Dark was so far off in his calculations.(Valmis, as usual, took little notice of what was going on with our endeavor, preferring to watch the Berliners go about their business from his vantage point in a place called Café des Westens; he said they formed Patterns unlike any he had yet seen.) It took not three days to rebuild the Kaiser's arm, as Dark had so confidently stated, but four; a thirty-three and one-third percent error, far beyond what a trained engineer ought to encounter.On the Kaiser's instruction, we did not inform Wells or Oxford of what Dark was doing with him.We put it about that they were having extended talks on topics of great import, which did not require the participation of anyone else.Wells expressed some perturbation about this supposed state of affairs."I'm not, of course, taken in by the fiction of nationalism," he told me, as we sat over a couple samples of a local refreshment called Schnapps at the Café des Westens, where we had joined Valmis (who reported that it was quite effective in aiding the Perception of Patterns), "but I'm bound to say that it makes me uneasy that Dark's been en tête-à-tête with the Kaiser for such a time.I'd hate to think that Germany was getting all sorts of plans for long-range guns or land ironclads or things like that that might be used against England.Or for that matter against America—what d'you say to that, Oxford?"Oxford, who had contrived somehow to find a glass of his favorite Würzburger so far from home, remarked mildly, "It'd have to be a mighty long-range gun to worry us, I expect.With three thousand miles of Atlantic between us and any worthwhile enemy, I guess we can afford to consider your wars as sporting events we can get good newspaper copy from."Recalling Ari's sure prediction of the involvement of all nations in the coming conflict, I once more felt a pang of distress at the dissimulation we were obliged to practice, and ordered a double portion of the Schnapps restorative, which immediately exercised a calming influence on me."Dark wouldn't do a thing like that," I said."He's as straight as they come, straight as a.whatever it is you have here that's very straight.If he knew anything about long-range guns, which I know for a fact he doesn't, and he told the Kaiser about it, which he wouldn't, why, then, he'd tell King Edward the same, if he was asked, and Edison, and Geronimo, and Mr.Hearst, and Captain Thatcher, and that chap who so kindly drove us in the brewery truck, and Mr.Barrymore, and the lady he met on the boat—Dark, that is, not Barrymore, for I'm sure he wasn't traveling with us—and." I went on a bit more, being rather pleased with myself for remembering so many of the very interesting people we had run across during our enforced stay on this planet.But both Oxford and Wells lost interest in the topic of conversation and turned to talk of other subjects, particularly the varieties of evening entertainment Berlin offered.They embarked on an exploration of these, on which I accompanied them, although I have no precise recollection of what happened during it.In different establishments, a number of persons, both male and female, sang or spoke prepared speeches, which aroused generally favorable reactions, but as this was done in the German tongue, to which I was a stranger, I did not attempt to arrive at any opinion about what I saw.Refreshments were available in copious quantities, and I tried several sorts of them.Most were quite good, and I resolved to make a list of the best, but later lost it, or perhaps forgot to write it out.It was the next morning, the fourth after our arrival in Berlin, when Dark came to the quarters that had been allotted to me in the Palace [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]