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

later, a cave man, one of a dozen on the entire world, goes
hunting wild boar or saber-tooth tiger for food. But you,
friend, have stepped on all the tigers in that region. By
stepping on one single mouse. So the cave man starves. And
the cave man, please note, is not just any expendable man,
no I He is an entire future nation. From his loins would have
sprung ten sons. From their loins one hundred sons, and thus
onward to a civilisation. Destroy this one man, and you
destroy a race, a people, an entire history of life. It is
comparable to slaying some of Adam's grandchildren. The stomp
of your foot, on one mouse, could start an earthquake, the
effects of which could shake our earth and destinies down
through Time, to their very foundations. With the death
of that one cave man, a billion others yet unborn are
throttled in the womb. Perhaps Rome never rises on its
seven hills. Perhaps Europe is forever a dark forest, and
only Asia waxes healthy and teeming. Step on a mouse and
you crush the Pyramids. Step on a mouse and you leave
your print, like a Grand Canyon, across Eternity. Queen
Elizabeth might never be born, Washington might not cross
the Delaware, there might never be a United States at all.
So be careful. Stay on the Path, Never step off!"
"I see," said Eckels. "Then it wouldn't pay for us even to
touch the grass?"
"Correct. Crushing certain plants could add up infinitesimally.
A little error here would multiply in sixty million
years, all out of proportion. Of course maybe our theory
is wrong. Maybe Time can't be changed by us. Or maybe
it can be changed only in little subtle ways. A dead mouse
here makes an insect imbalance there, a population
disproportion later, a bad harvest further on, a depression, mass
starvation, and, finally, a change in social temperament in
far-flung countries. Something much more subtle, like that.
Perhaps only a soft breath, a whisper, a hair, pollen on the
air, such a slight, slight change that unless you looked close
you wouldn't see it. Who knows? Who really can say he
knows? We don't know. We're guessing. But until we do
know for certain whether our messing around in Time can
make a big roar or a little rustle in history, we're being
damned careful. This Machine, this Path, your clothing and
bodies, were sterilised, as you know, before the journey. We
wear these oxygen helmets so we can't introduce our
bacteria into an ancient atmosphere."
"How do we know which animals to shoot?"
"They're marked with red paint," said Travis. "Today, before
our journey, we sent Lesperance here back with the
Machine. He came to this particular era and followed
certain animals."
"Studying them?"
"Right," said Lesperance. "I track them through their