"Ron Goulart - The Robot In The Closet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

"Try the three-year first," advised Dibner, Keese and Mermillion.
"I didn't pay this friendly call to talk of romance, child. I want to warn you how foolhardy your
contemplated trip in time is," persisted her blind uncle. "Why, in the twenty-six years since time
travel was perfected and the Time Travel Overseeing Commission set up hundreds of chronic
travelers have vanished, never to be—"
"The actual figure is forty-three," corrected Roscoe. "And sixteen of those didn't vanish, they
just decided to set up house in the past. Take Ferman, who bought a nice little cottage in the Dark
Ages. Last time I bumped into him he was happy as a—"
"I am prepared to finance a splendid vacation for you, Sara," offered Uncle Oscar. "You can
even take your schoolteacher friend here. Any place in the world, or out to the moon or one of the
space colonies."
Sara shook her head. "We are going back in time," she said evenly. "You're not going to keep
me from finding the . . . from tracing my roots."
"My dear, the perils, the troubles you'll face, are—"
"We're going!" Tim moved to the door and activated the opening mex. "I suggest you and your
lawyer depart."
Ignoring him, the old man asked Sara, "Won't you, please, reconsider?"
"No. Next week we are leaving for the past, Uncle."
"Foolish, ill-advised. Stubborn girl," muttered O.O. Tenbrook as he, swinging his stick from
side to side, headed out. "I've done all I can."
Dibner, Keese and Mermillion took the old man's arm. "Can't we stick around for breakfast?
Why go . . ."
Tenbrook kept moving through the new day, and his attorney followed him into his sleek black
skycar. In seconds it was zooming away across the lightening sky.
Sara came over to hug Tim. "I'm happy you're on my side now." She kissed him on the cheek.
"I obviously can't be on Uncle Oscar's side."
"Complications and chicanery," said Roscoe with a tinny chuckle. "Gad, I'm going to get a real
boot out of this particular escapade."
CHAPTER 3
Roscoe was jingling slightly as he held up the suitcase. "Herewith we have an authentic
alligator gladstone, folks, a handsome and sturdy object that'd cost you at least a good two and a
half bucks in any of the 1906 Frisco luggage shops," he explained, thumping it with his metal
fingers. "Actually this is no more than a cleverly constructed plaz fake, turned out last month in
China 3 by—"
"Why is it you're jingling?" Tim was standing, arms folded, as far across the living room from
the robot time machine as he could. "Don't know if I want to go whizzing through the mists of time
with a mechanism who's—"
" 'Tis merely more props for our jaunt, putz." Carefully placing the alligator suitcase on the
floor, and bowing toward Sara, he tapped a compartment in his left buttock. When a tiny
compartment popped open, Roscoe extracted a handful of money, paper and coins. "This should be
ample cash for our brief stay in ought six. Meself, I always favor half eagles when I'm working
around the turn of that particular century." He rotated a sample gold piece with thumb and
forefinger, catching the midmorning light with it. "We'll be taking a handful of these nifty, albeit
bogus, five-smacker pieces, seemingly minted right there in Frisco in 1901. Notice, Miss Sara, how
believably worn and circulated each and every one appears. We'll also carry three hundred bucks in
folding moola, mostly in these convincingly engraved McKinley Blue Seal tens, plus a few
Sherman Red Seal fifties, the latter to impress the yokels. I'm also taking a half-dozen two-dollar
bills, the 1896 model, which features a lady I take to be Liberty and her entourage lolling around in
a mildly skin-mag pose, in case I want to light a cheroot whilst strolling through the splendid lobby
of the Palace Hotel on Market—"