"Ian Watson - The Very Slow Time Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

The Very Slow Time Machine
Ian Watson

• Hugo Nominee 1979

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(1990)
The Very Slow Time Machine--for convenience: the VSTM--made its first appearance at exactly
midday 1 December 1985 in an unoccupied space at the National Physical Laboratory. It signaled its
arrival with a loud bang and a squall of expelled air. Dr. Kelvin, who happened to be looking In its
direction, reported that the VSTM did not exactly spring into existence instantly, but rather expanded
very rapidly from a point source, presumably explaining the absence of a more devastating explosion as
the VSTM jostled with the air already present in the room. Later, Kelvin declared that what he had
actually seen was the implosion of the VSTM. Doors were sucked shut by the rush of air, instead of
bursting open, after all. However it was a most confused moment and the confusion persisted, since the
occupant of the VSTM (who alone could shed light on its nature) was not only time-reversed with regard
to us, but also quite crazy.
*The term V S T M is introduced retrospectively in view of our subsequent understanding of the problem (2O19).


One infuriating thing is that the occupant visibly grows sane and more presentable (in his reversed way)
the more that time passes. We feel that the hard work and thought devoted to the enigma of the VSTM is
so much energy poured down the entropy sinkbecause the answer is' going to come from him, from
inside, not from us; so that we may as well just have bided our time until his condition improved (or, from
his point of view, began to degenerate). And in the meantime his arrival distorted and perverted essential
re-'search at our laboratory from its course without providing any tangible return for it.

The VSTM was the size of a small station wagon; but it had the shape of a huge lead sulfide, or galena,
crystal-which is, in crystallographer's jargon, an octahedron-with-cube formation consisting of eight
large hexagonal faces with six smaller square faces filling in the gaps. It perched precariouslybut
immovablyon the base square, the four lower hexagona swellying up and out towards its waist where
four more squares (oblique, vertically) connected with the mirror image upper hemisphere, rising to a
square north pole. Indeed it looked like a kind of world globe, lopped and sheered into flat planes: and
has remained very much a separate, private world to this day, along with its passenger.

All faces were blank metal except for one equatorial square equatorial square facing southwards into the
main body of the laboratory. This was a windowof glass as thick as that of a deep-ocean diving
bellwhich could apparently be opened from inside, and only from inside.

The passenger within looked as ragged an tattered as a tramp; as crazy, dirty, woebegone and
tangle-haired as any lunatic in an ancient Bedlam He was apparently very old; or at any rate solitary
confinement in that cell made him so. He was pallid, crook-backed, skinny and rotten-toothed. He raved
and mumbled soundlessly at our spotlights. Or maybe he only mouthed his ravings and mumbles, since
we could hear nothing whatsoever through the thick glass. When we obtained the services of a lip-reader
two days later the mad old man seemed to be mouthing mere garbage, a mishmash of sounds. Or was
he? Obviously no one could be expected to lip-read backwards; already, from his actions and gestures,
Dr. Yang had suggested that the man was time-reversed. So we video-taped the passenger's mouthings
and played the tapes backwards for our lip-reader. Well, it was still garbage. Backwards, or forwards,
the unfortunate passenger had visibly cracked up. Indeed, one proof of his insanity was that he should be