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I would not have been believed.
How else? I had trouble believing it myself.
Captain Hansen, a hearty no-nonsense man, would have bellowed with laughter at my 'joke' and insisted on another toast. Had I persisted in my 'delusion' he would have had the ship's doctor talk to me.
Still, I got through that amazing evening easier by holding tight to the notion that I must concentrate on acting the part of Alec Graham while never letting anyone suspect that I was a changeling, a cuckoo's egg.
There had just been placed in front of me a slice of princess cake, a beautiful multilayered confection I recalled from the other Konge Knut, and a small cup of coffee, when the Captain stood up. 'Come, Alec! We go to the lounge now; the show is ready to start - but they can't start till I get there. So come on! You don't want all that sweet stuff; it's not good for you. You can have coffee in the lounge. But before that we have some man's drinks, henh? Not these joke drinks. You like Russian vodka?'
He linked his arm in mine. I discovered that I was going to the lounge. Volition did not enter into it.
That lounge show was much the mixture I had found earlier in M. V. Konge Knut - a magician who did improbable things but not as improbable as what I had done (or been done to?), a standup comedian who should have sat down, a pretty girl who sang, and dancers. The major differences were two I had already been exposed to: bare skin and bare words, and by then I was so numb from earlier shock and akvavit that these additional proofs of a different world had minimal effect
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