"Robert F. Young - The Dandelion Girl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

curve of her throat and chin brought the tightness back, and when she turned and said, "Hello, I didn't
think you'd come," it was a long while before he was able to answer.
"But I did," he finally said, "and so did you."

"Yes," she said. "I'm glad."

A nearby outcropping of granite formed a bench of sorts, and they sat down on it and looked out over
the land. He filled his pipe and lighted it and blew smoke into the wind. "My father smokes a pipe too,"
she said, "and when he lights it, he cups his hands the same way you do, even when there isn't any wind.
You and he are alike in lots of ways."

"Tell me about your father," he said. "Tell me about yourself too."

And she did, saying that she was twenty-one, that her father was a retired government physicist, that they
lived in a small apartment on Two Thousand and Fortieth Street, and that she had been keeping house
for him ever since her mother had died four years ago. Afterward he told her about himself and Anne and
Jeff—about how he intended to take Jeff into partnership with him someday, about Anne's phobia about
cameras and how she had refused to have her picture taken on their wedding day and had gone on
refusing ever since, about the grand time the three of them had had on the camping trip they'd gone on
last summer.

When he had finished, she said, "What a wonderful family life you have. Nineteen-sixty-one must be a
marvelous year in which to live!"

"With a time machine at your disposal, you can move here any time you like."

"It's not quite that easy. Even aside from the fact that I wouldn't dream of deserting my father, there's the
time police to take into consideration. You see, time travel is limited to the members of
government-sponsored historical expeditions and is out of bounds to the general public."

"You seem to have managed all right."

"That's because my father invented his own machine, and the time police don't know about it."

"But you're still breaking the law."

She nodded. "But only in their eyes, only in the light of their concept of time. My father has his own
concept."

It was so pleasant hearing her talk that it did not matter really what she talked about, and he wanted her
to ramble on, no matter how farfetched her subject. "Tell me about it," he said.

"First I'll tell you about the official concept. Those who endorse it say that no one from the future should
participate physically in anything that occurred in the past, because his very presence would constitute a
paradox, and future events would have to be altered in order for the paradox to be assimilated.
Consequently the Department of Time Travel makes sure that only authorized personnel have access to
its time machines, and maintains a police force to apprehend the would-be generation-jumpers who yearn
for a simpler way of life and who keep disguising themselves as historians so they can return permanently
to a different era.