"Hamilton, Peter F - Softlight Sins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

conviction growing inside him. It was one of the most frightening
experiences he had ever known. A precognition that could look into the
past.
"Genghis Khan?" Barbara Johnson suggested.
"He was late tenth century," Judge Hayward said thoughtfully. "We've
regressed well past that now."
We have another half hour before this hypnogenic wears off," Dr Elliot
said. "Do you want me to go on?"
"Yes," Judge Hayward said before Douglas could voice a protest.
Should I object? I want to know who he was, what he did. And I don't want
to know. That is the way my life goes, always unable to decide. Well it
ends now. Taken out of my hands. I could have stopped it, right at the
start, I could have said no, stood firm. But I did what appeared best at
the time. I cannot be blamed for that. It is not I who is stained by
guilt.
They waited in restless silence while the forty-first incarnation flooded
into the body of Adrian Reynolds. His eyes narrowed, the irises appearing
to blacken, receding to some indefinable depth. For one supremely
disconcerting moment Douglas thought he was looking directly into a
distance beyond that of galactic night.
I know that man, that look; he holds a terror from which even insanity is
no refuge. I have seen it once before, so long ago. But where?
Douglas heard the terminal start with a Hebrew greeting; the man answered
straight away.
"What is your name?" Dr Elliot asked.
The man blinked, his lips quivering as he fought against the words the
hypnogenic was tearing from his mind. "I am named Judas Iscariot." His
wounded gaze swept round the five of them in a voiceless plea. Then he saw
Douglas, and a confounded light of recognition flared. "Pilate," he cried.
"Pontius Pilate."
Douglas stared back at him in mute horror while time quietly dissolved
inside his brain.

© Peter F Hamilton 1997, 1998.
This story first appeared as a Novacon chapbook, published by the
Birmingham Science Fiction Group in a limited edition of 350 copies.