"Robert F. Young - Time Travel Inc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

allow 24 hours leeway, though."
"We figured on 24 hours," Reddinger said.
"Fine! ... Now, if you'll lie back and relax and look up into the time-screens above your beds, I'll set
your temporal patterns."
"Joseph of Arimathaea was a rich man, wasn't he?" Reddinger asked dreamily.
"Yes, I believe he was," the Time-tech said.
"And a merchant, too—"
"Probably. Now no more conversation, please. Look straight up into your screens."

The screens, Reddinger discovered, comprised the underside of the crystal canopies—were, in fact,
the crystal canopies. As he looked up into his, it began to glow. Presently it became a mirror in which he
saw himself lying on a couch looking up into a mirror in which he saw himself lying on a couch looking up
into a mirror, ad infinitum...
There was a sudden, painful jolt, followed by a tearing sensation—


HIS right shoulder was a mass of screaming agony and the weight upon it bent his burly body
halfway to the cobbled pavement. There was shouting all around him, and oaths, and the stench of sweat
and dung.

Behind him he could hear the clanking of the accouterments of the Roman soldiers. To his right he
glimpsed the faces of the crowd. On his far left—on the opposite side of the procession—he saw his
companion, Held, weighed down with a burden similar to his own. Between them, another walked—a
thin, haggard man wearing a plaited crown of thorns. A volunteer from the crowd walked in his wake,
bearing the third burden...
The Via Doloroso, Reddinger thought. Only he wasn't Reddinger any more. He was Dysmas. And
Held—Held wasn't Held any more, either. He was Gestas.
Dysmas and Gestas—the two thieves!
The horror of his predicament was so enormous that for some time Dysmas-Reddinger could not
accept it. Then, when the procession reached the gate of the city and he saw the green hill rising gently
into the blue sky, the horror descended on him, heavier even than the cross he bore, and he knew that
whether Mary, Mother of Jesus, was present at the Crucifixion, or miles away in Galilee, neither he nor
Held would be around to collect any bets on the morrow—
Or ever.

THE END