"Leo Frankowski - Stargard 7 - Conrad's Time Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Frankowski Leo)

Forward
Many of my books were a long time getting finished, but unless I live to be a
hundred, this one is the record setter.
I was in high school in the fifties when I asked my self the classic science
fiction question, "What if?" In this case, it was what if time travel were
really possible? I wasn't concerned with the paradoxes that other writers had
explored to more than completion. I was wondering what else you could do with
it.
My first attempts at writing were pretty amateurish. I didn't know much about
writing, but having cut my teeth on Robert Heinlein juveniles, I knew good
writing from bad. Wisely, I kept my smudged pages to myself. Anyway, I was too
busy flunking out of Senior English to have much time for anything else. Back
then, I had some truly wretched English teachers, who forced the poetry and
Shakespeare that I had loved down my throat so hard that I soon hated it and


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him—and them. I eventually regained my love for it and him, but never for them.
It never occurred to me that I would end up as a professional writer.
Not when I had some really great science teachers, who knew their subjects and
taught them well. A career in science, technology, and/or maybe business seemed
to be my obvious life path.
Still, the thoughts kept on welling up, like bubbles in a cesspool. If you could
move something, maybe even yourself, from one position in the space-time
continuum to any other position, then you would immediately have effectively
infinite wealth and power. You could always win the lotteries, always buy the
best stock on the market, always bet on the winning horse.
So, with that going for you, what would you do with your life, aside from
getting filthy rich? Well? No quick answer? I didn't have one either. It took me
forty-three years to work it out, and even then it took the help of my good
friend, Lieutenant Colonel David Grossman to finally give me a good ending for
the story.
I hope you enjoy it.
—Leo Frankowski
Tver, Russia
2002


CHAPTER I
Sad Leavings
The war in Vietnam was heating up, half the people in the country were smoking
dope, and the Flower Children were sprouting peace and free love all over the
place.
I was only vaguely aware of it.
It was 1968, and I was leaving.
The Air Force never said goodbye, but I didn't love them either. I'd made a few
good friends in the service, but Chris was in the guard house again, SelfCheck
had been discharged the week before, Crazy Mormon was on leave, and Johnny