"Bester, Alfred - Hobson's Choice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bester Alfred)

“The way I see it,” the gray-haired man continued conversationally, “when they come back they’re swimming against the time current. That slows ‘em down. When they come forward, they’re swimming with the current. That speeds ‘em up. Of course, in any case it doesn’t last longer than a few minutes. It wears off.”
“What?” Addyer said. “Time travel?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“That thing Addyer pointed to the radio. “A time machine?”
“That’s the idea. Roughly.”
“But it’s too small.”
The gray-haired man laughed.
“What is this place anyway? What are you up to?”
“It’s a funny thing,” the gray-haired man said. “Everybody used to speculate about time travel. How it would be used for exploration, archaeology, historical and social research and so on. Nobody ever guessed what the real use would be. . . . Therapy.”
“Therapy? You mean medical therapy?”
“That’s right. Psychological therapy for the misfits who won’t respond to any other cure. We let them emigrate. Escape. We’ve set up stations every quarter century. Stations like this.” -
“I don’t understand.”
“This is an immigration office.”
“Oh, my God!” Addyer shot up from the couch. “Then you’re the answer to the population increase. Yes? That’s how I happened to notice it. Mortality’s up so high and birth’s down so low these days that your time-addition becomes significant. Yes?”
“Yes, Mr. Addyer.”
“Thousands of you coming here. From where?”
“From the future, of course. Time travel wasn’t developed until C/H 127. That’s . . . oh, say, AD. 2505 your chronology. We didn’t set up our chain of stations until C/H 189.”
“But those fast-moving ones. You said they came forward from the past.”
“Oh, yes, but they’re all from the future originally. They just decided they went too far back.”
“Too far?”
The gray-haired man nodded and reflected. “It’s amusing, the mistakes people will make. They become unrealistic when they read history. Lose
contact with facts. Chap I knew . . . wouldn’t be satisfied with anything less than Elizabethan times. ‘Shakespeare,’ he said. ‘Good Queen Bess. Spanish Armada. Drake and Hawkins and Raleigh. Most virile period in history. The Golden Age. That’s for me.’ I couldn’t talk sense into him, so we sent him back. Too bad.”
“Well?” Addyer asked.
“Oh, he died in three weeks. Drank a glass of water. Typhoid.”
“You didn’t inoculate him? I mean, the army when it sends men overseas always .
“Of course we did. Gave him all the immunization we could. But diseases evolve and change too. New strains develop. Old strains disappear. That’s what causes pandemics. Evidently our shots wouldn’t take against the Elizabethan typhoid. Excuse me . .
Again the glow appeared. Another nude man appeared, chattered briefly and then whipped through the door. He almost collided with the nude girl who poked her head in, smiled and called in a curious accent, “Ic vous prie de me pardonner. Quy estoit cette gentilhomme?”
“I was right,” the gray-haired man said. “That’s Medieval French. They haven’t spoken like that since Rabelais.” To the girl he said, “Middle English, please. The American dialect.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Jelling. I get so damned fouled up with my linguistics. Fouled? Is that right? Or do they say . .
“Hey!” Addyer cried in anguish.
“They say it, but only in private these years. Not before strangers.”
“Oh, yes. I remember. Who was that gentleman who just left?”
“Peters.”
“From Athens?”
“That’s right.”
“Didn’t like it, eh?”
“Not much. Seems the Peripatetics didn’t have plumbing.”
“Yes. You begin to hanker for a modern bathroom after a while. Where do I get some clothes . . . or don’t they wear clothes this century?”
“No, that’s a hundred years forward. Go see my wife. She’s in the outfitting room in the barn. That’s the big red building.”
The tall lighthouse-man Addyer had first seen in the farmyard suddenly manifested himself behind the girl. He was now dressed and moving at normal speed. He stared at the girl; she stared at him. “Splem!” they both cried. They embraced and kissed shoulders.
“St’u my rock-ribbering rib-rockery to heart the hearts two,” the man said.
“Heart’s too, argal, too heart,” the girl laughed.
“Eh? Then you st’u too.”
They embraced again and left.
“What was that? Future talk?” Addyer asked. “Shorthand?”
“Shorthand?” Jelling exclaimed in a surprised tone. “Don’t you know rhetoric when you hear it? That was thirtieth-century rhetoric, man. We don’t talk anything else up there. Prosthesis, Diastole, Epergesis, Metabasis, Hendiadys
And we’re all born scanning.”
“You don’t have to sound so stuck-up,” Addyer muttered enviously. “I could scan too if I tried.”
“You’d find it damned inconvenient trying at your time of life.”
“What difference would that make?”