"Daniel Da Cruz - Mixed Doubles" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

 The first sullen glow of another sodden day had filtered through the clerestory windows when Pope,
exhausted, finally returned to the world. Rain still hammered down on the low building's roof. Wearily, he
had switched off the lights and reached for his raincoat, when fatigue said the hell with it. He lay down
where he stood, behind the filing cabinet, tucked the wadded raincoat beneath his head, and promptly
drifted off to sleep in a velvet sea of unaccustomedly rich dark harmonies.
He was still afloat on waves of silent sound when Prof. Dr. Dr. Klemper stumped into the laboratory
and double-locked the door behind him. He was a short, swarthy, powerful man in his late forties with
the granitic weath-ered features of a seaman. He turned on the floodlights and from the locked drawer of
his laboratory desk took out the neatly typed operating manual he had been writ-ing and rewriting during
the past eight months. He placed it on the lectern next to the computer before the instru-ment panel.
From time to time double-checking with the manual, he began to punch in the commands that, he had
calculated from ceaseless experimentation, would project him three thousand years into the past, plus or
minus fifteen years. It was a vast improvement on his first ef-forts, which had been accurate only to
within two cen-turies. The reentry program was more precise by many orders of magnitude: it would
bring him back to the mo-ment of departure, plus zero to seventeen hours.
Only slight adjustments to the program were neces-sary. When he had entered those on the computer,
he switched on the big gasoline-driven generator on its con-crete platform in the center of the lab. The
generator ticked over with a steady pulsating hum. Klemper watched the dials on the instrument panel
swing up to critical levels. Then he pulled the master control lever to the "Engage" position and
straightened in his swivel chair. He took a cigar from the breast pocket of his suit coat, carefully cut it in
two with scissors, and lit one of the halves. When it was going nicely, he tucked the other half in his
opposite cheek and began chewing contem-platively. When the cud was well masticated, he took an
engraved silver box from his waistcoat pocket and deftly put a dollop of snuff between lower lip and
gum. Thus fortified, he punched the word "Run" on the computer keyboard, hit the return, and leaned
back in his chair for the long quick trip back to prehistoric California.
The lights in the laboratory dimmed momentarily, then a purplish electric haze began to fill the room
like smoke in a poolroom. Sunlight shone brightly through the sky-light for a minute or so, faded into
darkness, then again flashed into the laboratory. The oscillations between light and darkness sped up until
it seemed that the laboratory was being illuminated by a scarcely flickering strobo-scopic light. The walls
dissolved, to be replaced by a canopy of trees that alternately shrank and swelled and from time to time
briefly gave off the acrid fragrance of burning wood. The racks of instruments, the book-shelves, desks,
filing cabinets, growling generator, and the naked bulbs dangling from their cords were bathed in an
unearthly light that slowly turned from purplish to red, held steady for some minutes, then turned slowly
back to purple. About the overhead wires a multihued aurora crackled like northern lights in miniature.
The two menтАФone still asleepтАФwere frozen in the positions they had found themselves in when Dr.
Kemper had set the time-transference machine in motion. Their minds and bodies were in a state of
suspended animation, un-breathing, not even conscious of the thread of life that was being stretched thin
but had not yet snapped.
Suddenly there was a fearful jolt, and it was light. The laboratoryтАФeverything that stood beneath the
framework of overhead wiresтАФhad been transported intact to the crest of the wooded hill on which,
three thousand years hence, the Omar Haffar Molecular Sciences Building would rest. Around them the
hill was carpeted with sweet-smelling wildflowers. A mule deer, frightened by the sudden apparition, fled
for its life with a clatter of hooves. Dr. Klemper laughed in triumph, stood up, and drenched a wild daisy
in a well-aimed jet of tobacco juice.
He went to a metal locker, unlocked it, and changed into a leather jacket with a fur collar. Zipping it
up, he donned leather gloves and a flier's helmet with goggles. Around his hips he buckled a web belt
with a brace of .45 automatic pistols and canteen. From the locker shelf he took a leather pouch, which
he tied to his belt, and an aerial map. Spreading the map out on his desk, he verified the course that
would take him to his destination, a little more than an hour's flight away.
Justin Pope, who had been awakened by the jolt of the laboratory coming to rest, watched in stunned