Explore "The Atom Curtain" by Nick B. Williams on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"Suppose," O'Hara said to me, leaning forward suddenly, his empty glass in his hand, "you were to fly tomorrow to the Prefecture of Switzerland -- leave London, say, at noon, and arrive there twenty minutes later and alight at the Bern airstrip and then start walking, away from the town into the countryside -- into the mountains. You'd have the feeling of London clinging to you. At any moment, you'd think, you could return to the airstrip and be again in London -- in Bloomsbury, here -- within twenty minutes, if you wished.
"Now, suppose further, that while you're walking through those Swiss mountains, you come upon a magnificent woman, larger than most women of Europe and more beautiful by far, auburn-haired, blue-eyed, dressed strangely in furs in a costume very like a Highlander's. And within a half hour's time she has attempted to knock out your brains and you, in defending yourself, have instead been forced to flatten her, and then have found that this was exactly what she'd hoped you would be able to do, and that henceforward she is your woman -- not your slave but your mate -- the mother of children who will be yours but who will not call you their father.