"Murray Leinster - Time Tunnel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

phered, and perfectly valid principles of statistical analysis,
and the real structure of atoms, and radioactivity, and what
could be done with petroleum. // it were possible to travel in
time, all those bits of information could be known to a man
of Napoleon's era if he happened to be moderately well-
informed and had traveled back to then from here and now."
"But you don't believe that!" protested Pepe.
"Of course not. But it explains every fact but one."
"The one fact it does not explain," said Pepe, "should be
interesting."
"The fact is," Harrison told him, "that there was a man
named Bassompierre, and he was a friend of Talleyrand's. He
was born in 1767, he travelled in the Orient for several years,
and he returned to France to discover that an imposter had
assumed his identity and looted his estates. The imposter at-
tacked him when he was unmasked, and was killed. So de
Bassompierre resumed his station in society, corresponded
with men of scienceall this is in the official biographical
material about himand he was useful to Napoleon on one or
two occasions but was highly regarded by the Bourbons when
they returned. You see?"
Pepe frowned.
"There was a man named de Bassompierre!" said Harrison
harassedly. "He was born two hundred-odd years ago! He
died in 1858! He's authentic! There's no mystery about
him. He couldn't be a time-traveller!"
"Ah, I am relieved!" said Pepe amiably. "You see, I under.
stood that if one travelled into the past, he might by bad
fortune happen to kill his grandfather as a youth. In such a
case, he would not be born to go back in time to kill his
grandfather. But if he were not born, he could not kill his
grandfather, so he would be born to kill his grandfather.
So he would not. So he would. And so on. I have considered
that one could not travel into the past because of that little
difficulty about one's grandfather."
"But in an exceptional case," said Harrison, "a case, for
instance, in which a time-traveller did not happen to kill his
grandfather, that argument doesn't hold."
They went down the street together. Pepe made a grand
gesture.
"Again, if one could travel in time, then even without
killing one's grandfather one might change the past and
therefore the present. Even the history books would have
to change!"
"Yes," agreed Harrison wrily. "There might not be an
Emperor Maximilian, for example. There might not be a you.
Or a me. We might not ever have existed. I'd deplore that!"
"But do you mean," protested Pepe, "that because for a
few seconds it seemed to us that an historical character did not
exist" He grimaced. "Because for a few moments we were