"Harlan Ellison - Toward The Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

but he faded slowly, only staring up at me in dying wonder. Then I understood
one word of his lamentation, and I summoned up the hypnosleep learning that
applied. I spoke to him in Aramaic of the Hasmonean brotherhood. And I begged
him to tell me where the flasks of oil were kept.

But there were none. He had brought nothing with him, in advance of his priest
brothers and the return of Shimon from his battle with the citadel garrison.

It was a time of miracles, and I knew what to do.

I thumbed the readout on my wrist-cuff and watched as my light became a mere
pinpoint in his dying eyes.

I went back to Chicago. This was wrong, I knew this was wrong: timedrifters are
forbidden to alter the past. The three of us who were trained to go fugitive, we
understood above all else . . . change nothing, alter nothing, or risk a tainted
future. I knew what I was doing was wrong.

But, oh, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I went to Rosenbloom's, still in business on Devon Avenue, still in Rogers Park,
even this well into the 21st century. I had to buy some trustworthy oil.

I told the little balding clerk I wanted virgin olive oil so pure it could be
used in the holiest of ceremonies. He said, "How holy does it have to be for
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

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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