"Ellison-TowardTheLight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

Chanukah in Chicago?" I told him it was going to be used in Israel. He laughed.
"All oil today is 'tomei'-- you know what that is?" I said no, I didn't.
(Because, you see, I didn't say, I'm not a Good Jew, and I don't know such
things.) He said, "It means impure. And you know what virgin means? It means
every olive was squeezed, but only the first drop was used." I asked him if the
oil he sold was acceptable. He said, "Absolutely." I knew how much I needed, I'd
read the piece on Chanukah history. Half a log, the Talmud had said.
Tworiv-ee-eas. I had to look it up: about eight ounces, the equivalent of a pony
bottle of Budweiser. He sold it to me in a bottle of dark brown, opaque glass.

And I took the oil to one of the one hundred and sixty-three Gentiles on Project
Timedrift, a chemist named Bethany Sherward, and I asked her to perform a small
miracle. She said, "Matty, this is hardly a miracle you're asking for. You know
the alleged 'burning bush' that spoke to Moses? They still exist. Burning
bushes. In the Sinai, Saudi Arabia, Iraq. Mostly over the oil fields. They just
bum and burn and. . ."

While she did what she had to do, I went fugitive and found myself, a creature
of light once again, in the Beis Ha Mikdosh, in the fragile hours after
midnight, in the Hebrew month of Cheshvan, in the year 19.5 BCE; and I stole a
cruse of oil and took it back to Chicago and poured it into a sink, and realized
what an idiot I'd been. I needn't have gone to Rosenbloom's. I could have used
this oil, which was pure. But it was too late now. There was a lot we all had to
learn about traveling in time.

I got the altered oil from Bethany Sherward, and when I hefted the small
container I almost felt as if I could detect a heaviness that had not been there
before. This oil was denser than ordinary olive oil, virgin or otherwise.

I poured the new oil into the cruse. It sloshed at the bottom of the vessel.
This was a dark red, rough-surfaced clay jar, tapering almost into the shape of
the traditional Roman amphora, but it had a narrow base, and a fitted lid
without a stopper. It now contained enough oil for exactly one day, half a log.
I returned to the Timedrift lab, put on the suit of lights -- it was wonderful
to have one of only three triple-A clearances-- and set myself to return to the
Temple of the Mount, five minutes earlier than I'd appeared the first time. I
didn't know if I'd see myself coalesce into existence five minutes later, but I
did know that I could save the Kohane's life.

I went toward the light, I became a creature of the light yet again, and found
myself standing inside the gates once more. I started inside the Great Temple .
. . And heard the scream.

Time had adjusted itself. He was falling backward, the spear having ripped open
his chest. I charged the Syrian, hit him with the cruse of oil, knocked him to
the dirt, and crushed his windpipe with one full force stomp of my booted foot.

I stood staring down at him for perhaps a minute. I had killed a man. With
hardly the effort I would have expended to wipe sweat from my face, I had
smashed the life out of him. I started to shake, and then I heard myself