"Spider Robinson - Copyright Violation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

My own custom-ary euphemism is, "my buffer needs purging," and I was glad I had
caught myself. It might have warned her.
I have never been a decisive, quick-thinking quick-responding kind of guy. It's
easy to play practical jokes on me; I'm slow to catch on and even slower—days
slower, usually—to figure out what to do about it. Maybe a dozen times in my life
I've had one of those flashes of satori, those moments of insight in which a whole,
long logic chain appears at once before the mind's eye—and each time it came in my
work rather than my social life.
So maybe it helped that this one was work-related. Maybe it helped that I had just
had the best confidence boosting of my life. Maybe there is a kind of preternatural
clarity of thought that comes with total physical satisfaction ... and how in Hell
would I know?
It just seemed so simple, so obvious. So ines-capable—
"Don't bang your elbow on that chair behind you, darling," I called back over my
shoulder, and as she turned to look I bent down.
Just as I had guessed, the time machine was in her purse. It wasn't hard to
recognize. It looked like a bulky watch with no band. I was interested to find that
there was a weapon along with it, an unfamiliar but unmistakable handgun. I spun
and leaped, whipping my head to shake off the crown, and the distance was short;
as she was turning back toward me I cannoned into her and we went over in a heap,
my cheek against hers and my arms tight around her. For perhaps a second she
mistook it for clumsy erotic play, and that was enough time in the lamplight for me to
read the little word Qun and thumbnail the tiny recessed button which it labeled on
her "watch."
The light changed drastically, became labor-atory bright. Appropriate, as we were
now in a laboratory.
So was an astonished man in a white smock of odd design, and a shorter,
weasel-faced man in red high heels, pink patterned stockings, and a loudly-clashing
maroon kilt. Marga and I looked down on them slightly from a railing-encircled
platform whose height must have been calibrated to a high degree of precision.
Weasel-face was the loudest of the pair in more ways than one, and slowest on
the uptake; as the other man gaped, he was booming cheer-ily, "Welcome back,
pixel, did you get a good—crash, Marga! What did you bring the mark back for?"
His face curled reflexively on itself. "The frotter wants points, eh?"
“Jimby, help!" Marga screamed, and he step-ped back a pace, high heels
clattering on the lab floor. She tried to break my embrace, and should have
succeeded, but now I was as strong as a normal roan. I not only held her, I got my
thumbnail back on that button.
The lights dimmed again suddenly, and my rug prickled once again on my bare
skin. I let her go and rolled convulsively clear, sprang to my feet clutching her time
machine. She started to rise too. Halfway up she saw her gun in my other hand, and
sank back down. I must have been holding it correctly.
I knew that if I said anything my voice would crack, so I waited until I was sure I
had con-trol.
"Did you ever think to wonder," I asked at last, "what a guy like me would do for
a living?"
"Do you want me to guess?" she asked sul-lenly. "All right. A janitor? An
accountant? A fast-food cook? A painter? A writer?"
I nodded. "You wouldn't know, would you? This is too good an apartment for
any of those. But that aside, even in those professions you have to be ... more