"Heinlein, Robert A - All You Zombies (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Hmm-"
"You just do your job, Sergeant. -- I turned to my
companion.
"Son, your troubles are over. You're about to start the
best job a man ever held-and you'll do well. I know. --
"That you will! " agreed the sergeant. -- Look at me -
born in 1917-still around, still young, still enjoying life. --
I went back to the jump room, set everything on preselected
zero.

2301-V-7 Nov. 1970-NYC -"Pop's Place": I came out of
the storeroom carrying a fifth of Drambuie to account for the
minute I had been gone. My assistant was arguing with the
customer who had been playing "I'm My Own Grand-paw! " I said,
"Oh, let him play it, then unplug it. -- I was very tired.
It's rough, but somebody must do it, and it's very hard
to recruit anyone in the later years, since the Mistake of
1972. Can you think of a better source than to pick people all
fouled up where they are and give them well-paid, interesting
(even though dangerous) work in a necessary cause? Everybody
knows now why the Fizzle War of 1963 fizzled. The bomb with New
York's number on it didn't go off, a hundred other things
didn't go as planned-all arranged by the likes of me.
But not the Mistake of "72; that one is not our
fault-and can't be undone; there's no paradox to resolve. A
thing either is, or it isn't, now and forever amen. But there
won't be another like it; an order dated "1992" takes
precedence any year.
I closed five minutes early, leaving a letter in the
cash register telling my day manager that I was accepting his
offer to buy me out, to see my lawyer as I was leaving on a
long vacation. The Bureau might or might not pick up his
payments, but they want things left tidy. I went to the room in
the back of the storeroom and forward to 1993.

2200-VII- 12 Jan 1993-Sub Rockies Annex-HQ Temporal
DOL: I checked in with the duty officer and went to my
quarters, intending to sleep for a week. I had fetched the
bottle we bet (after all, I won it) and took a drink before I
wrote my report. It tasted foul, and I wondered why I had ever
liked Old Underwear. But it was better than nothing; I don't
like to be cold sober, I think too much. But I don't really hit
the bottle either; other people have snakes-I have people.
I dictated my report; forty recruitments all okayed by
the Psych Bureau - counting my own, which I knew would be
okayed. I was here, wasn't I? Then I taped a request for
assignment to operations; I was sick of recruiting. I dropped
both in the slot and headed for bed.
My eye fell on "The By-Laws of Time, " over my bed: