"George Alec Effinger - The Nick of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

THE NICK OF TIME
by GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER (1985)

[VERSION 1.1 (October 13 2006). If you find and correct errors in the text, please update the version
number by 0.1 and redistribute.]

Part One, ‘The World of Pez Pavilion: Preliminary to the Groundbreaking Ceremony,’ first appeared
in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, copyright ©1983 by Mercury Publications




For Debbie



Things are more like they are now than they ever were before
--Dwight D. Eisenhower

Time is an illusion perpetrated by the manufacturers of space
--Nobody



-=*=-



Book One
The World of Pez Pavilion: Preliminary to the Groundbreaking Ceremony

Day One
Just at noon on the seventeenth of February, 1996, Frank Mihalik became the first person to travel
backward through time. He looked like an explorer and he spoke like a pioneer. He was tall and
broad-shouldered and well-muscled, with a deep chest covered with the right amount of dark hair --
virile but not atavistic -- with large strong hands but the gentle manner of a man who has made a gracious
peace with the powerful body nature had given him. He had short dark hair and bright unyielding eyes.
His face was rugged and handsome, but not pretty and definitely not cute. He spoke in a low earnest
voice and smiled often. He was intelligent but not tedious, a good friend in times of happiness or sorrow,
a joy to his aging mother, a solid citizen, and a good credit risk. He had been chosen to make the first trip
into the past because Cheryl, his girlfriend, had roomed at college with a woman who was now a talent
coordinator on a popular late-night holovision talk show. Such a woman had a lot of influence in the last
years of the twentieth century.
The journey -- or, at least, Mihalik's departure -- was broadcast live all over the world. People in
every nation on Earth saw Mihalik step from the silver van where he'd eaten breakfast and gone through
his final briefing. Accompanied by the brooding brilliant director of the project, Dr. Bertram Waters,
Cheryl, and Ray, Mihalik's backup man, the volunteer walked the last fifty yards to the embarkation
stage. At the foot of the steps leading up to the stage itself, Mihalik shook hands with Dr. Waters and
Ray. He hugged Cheryl and kissed her, fondly but not passionately; this was a moment for emotional
control and steadiness. Mihalik went up the steps and sat in the folding chair that had been placed at the