"Bradbury, Ray - Sound of Thunder, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

as they had left it. The same man sat behind the same desk.
But the same man did not quite sit behind the same desk.
Travis looked around swiftly. "Everything okay here?" he
snapped.
"Fine. Welcome home!"
Travis did not relax. He seemed to be looking at the very
atoms of the air itself, at the way the sun poured through
the one high window.
"Okay, Eckels, get out. Don't ever come back."
Eckels could not move.
"You heard me," said Travis. "What're you staring at?"
Eckels stood smelling of the air, and there was a thing to
the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight, that only a faint
cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was there. The
colours, white, grey, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture,
in the sky beyond the window, were . . . were . . .
And there was a feel. His flesh twitched. His hands twitched.
He stood drinking the oddness with the pores of his body.
Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one of
those whistles that only a dog can hear. His body screamed
silence in return. Beyond this room, beyond this wall, beyond
this man who was not quite the same man seated at
this desk that was not quite the same desk . . . lay an entire
world of streets and people. What sort of world it was now,
there was no telling. He could feel them moving there,
beyond the walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown
in a dry wind. . . .
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the
office wall, the same sign he had read earlier today on first
entering.
Somehow, the sign had changed:
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEEH EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YOU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.
Eckels felt himself tall into a chair. He fumbled crazily
at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt,
trembling. "No, it can't be. Not a little thing like that. No!"
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and
black, was a butterfly, very beautiful, and very dead.
"Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!" cried
Eckels.
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that
could upset balances and knock down a line of small
dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes,
all down the years across Time. Eckels' mind whirled. It
couldn't change things. Killing one butterfly couldn't be that
important! Could it?
His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking: "Who