"Murray Leinster - Sidewise in Time (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

static ended, the boy sat down suddenly on the dew-wet grass. The colored woman reeled and grabbed
frantically at the nearest tree trunk. The basket of wash toppled and spilled in a snowstorm of
starched, varicolored clothing. Howls of terror from children. Sharp shrieks from women.
"Earthquake! Earthquake!" Figures appeared running, pouring out of houses. Someone fled out to a
sleeping porch, slid down a supporting column, and tripped over a rosebush in his pajamas. In
seconds, it seemed, the entire population of the street was out of doors. And then
there was a queer, blank silence. There was no earthquake. No house had fallen. No chimney had
cracked. Not so much as a dish or windowpane had made a sound in smashing. The sensation every
human being had felt was not an actual shaking of the ground. There had been moyement, yes, and of
the earth, but no such movement as any human being had ever dreamed of before. These people were
to learn of that movement much lafer. Now they stared blankly at each other.
And in the sudden, dead silence broken only by the hum of an idling car and the wail of a
frightened baby, a new sound became audible. It was the tramp of marching feet. With it came a
curious clanking and clattering noise. And then a marked command, which was definitely not in the
English language.
Down the street of a suburb of Joplin, Missouri, on June 5, in the Year of Our Lord 1935,
came a file of spear-armed, shield-bearing soldiers in the short, skirtlike togas of ancient Rome.
They wore helmets upon their heads. They peered about as if they were as blankly amazed as the
citizens of Joplin who regarded them. A long column of marching men came into view, every man with
shield and spear and the indefinable air of being used to just such weapons.
They halted at another barked order. A wizened little man with a short sword snapped a
question at the staring Americans. The high-school boy jumped. The wizened man roared his question
again. The high-school boy stammered, and painfully formed syllables with his lips. The wizened
man grunted in satisfaction. He talked, articulating clearly if impatiently. And the highschool
boy turned dazedly to the other Americans.
"He wants to know the name of this town," he said, unbelieving his own ears. "He's talking
Latin, like I learn in school. He says this town isn't on the road maps, and he doesn't know where
he is. But all the same he takes possession of it in the name of the Emperor Valerius Fabricius,
emperor of Rome and the far corners of the earth." And then the school-boy stuttered, "He-he says
these are the first six cohorts of the Forty second Legion, on garrison duty in Messalia. "That-


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that's supposed to be two days march up that way." He pointed in the direction of St. Louis.
The idling motor car roared suddenly into life. Its gears whined and it came rolling out
into the street. Its horn honked peremptorily for passage through the shield-clad soldiers. They
gaped at it. It honked again and moved toward them. A roared order, and they flung themselves upon
it, spears thrusting, short swords stabbing. Up to this instant there was not one single
inhabitant of Joplin who did not believe the spear-armed soldiers were motion picture actors, or
masqueraders, or something else equally insane but credible. But there was nothing make-believe
about their attack on the car. They assaulted it as if it were a strange and probably deadly
beast. They flung themselves into battle with it in a grotesquely reckless valor.
And there was nothing at all make-believe in the thoroughness and completeness with which
they speared Mr. Horace B. Davis, who had only intended to drive down to the cotton-brokerage
office of which he was chief clerk. They thought he was driving this strange beast to slaughter
them, and they slaughtered him instead. The high-school boy saw them do it, growing whiter and
whiter as he watched. When a swordsman approached the wizened man and displayed the severed head
of Mr. Davis, with the spectacles dangling grotesquely from-one ear, the high-school boy fainted