"Steven Gould - Jumper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gould Stephen Jay)

I appeared in the Stanville Library, back in front of the shelf that went from "Ruedinger, Cathy"
to "Wells, Martha." I smiled. I hadn't had any particular destination in mind when I'd jumped, only
escape. Every time I'd jumped from immediate, physical danger, I'd come here, to the safest haven I
knew.

I mentally listed all the places I'd teleported to and considered them.

They were all places I'd frequented before jumping to them, either recently, in the case of
Washington Square and the New York hotel, or repeatedly over a long period of time. They were
places I could picture in my mind. I wondered if that was all it took.

I went to the card catalog and looked up New York. There was a listing under guidebooks,
Dewey decimal 917.471. This led me to the 1986 Foster's Guide to New York City. On page 323
there was a picture of the lake in Central Park, in color, with a bench and trash can in the foreground,
the Loeb Boathouse to one side.
 When Mom and I were touring New York, she wouldn't let us go farther into Central Park than
the Metropolitan Museum on the park's east side. She'd heard too many stories of muggers and
rapes, so we didn't get to see the boathouse. I'd never been there.

I stared at the picture until I could close my eyes and see it.

I jumped and opened my eyes.

I hadn't moved. I was still standing in the library.

Hmph.

I flipped the pages and tried the same thing with other places I hadn't been—Bloomingdale's, the
Bronx Zoo, the interior of the base of the Statue of Liberty. None of them worked.

Then I hit a picture of the observation deck of the Empire State Building.

"Look, Mom, that's the Chrysler Building and you can see the World Trade Center and...

"Shhhh, Davy. Modulate your voice, please."

That was Mom's expression, "Modulate your voice." Much kinder than saying "Shut up" or
"Pipe down" or my dad's "Shut your hole." We'd gone there the second day of that trip and stayed up
there an hour. Before I hit the picture I hadn't realized what an impression it made on me. I thought I
only had hazy memories of it at best. But now I could remember it clearly.

I jumped and my ears popped, like they do when you take off and land in an airliner. I was
standing there, the cold wind off the East River blowing my hair and ruffling the pages of the
guidebook I still held in my hands. It was deserted. I looked down into the book and saw that the
hours were listed as 9:30 to midnight.

So, I could jump to places I'd been, which was a relief in a way. If Dad could teleport, he
wouldn't be able to jump into my hotel room in Brooklyn. He'd never been there.