"Effinger, George Alec - Maureen Birnbaum 03 - Maureen Birnbaum at the Looming Awfulness" - читать интересную книгу автора (Effinger George Alec)

You see, there were only two possible answers. The first was that he drank the
blood of innocent virgins to maintain his hideous and dreadful youth -- but that
was like scarcely possible, because he'd never made move one toward any of my
arteries, and you know I'd given him plenty of opportunities.

The second answer was that he was immortal and ageless, as I myself seem to be.
That was another reason that like screamed that Rod Marquand and I were perfect
for each other, made for each other as few other couples have been through the
whole sad parade of history.

Yet this Rod was like twenty years younger than the one I'd known during the
Yag-Nash episode. He would be meeting me as if for the first time. That didn't
tell me why he didn't recognize me at the Earth's core, twenty years later. I
went to Dr. Bertram A. Waters of the Yale University of Plasmonics Department
for help in understanding what had happened. He gave me like this completely
murky explanation. Here it is, as best as I can recall it:

"My dear Miss Bimbaum --" he goes.

I go -- believe me -- "I'm not your dear anything, pal."

He got this look on his face like someone had slipped the head of a banana slug
into his bag of malted milk balls. See, Bitsy, I know you got them there under
the covers. He goes, "I doubt if I'm your 'pal,' either, but I suppose it's just
a figure of speech. In any event, Maureen -- may I call you Maureen?"

"If you must," I go, wishing that he'd like just get on with it.

"How does one understand time? There are various ways of imagining it. And yes,
time is mostly imaginary. Of course, events happen and they must have some
matrix to happen in, if you follow me. One instant the electron is all excited,
and the next instant it's emitted its photon and gone home." I swear, Bitsy, the
guy leered at me. Take it from me, sweetie, Mo knows leering for sure.

And don't ever call me "Mo."

Dr. Waters told me that he thought of time -- everyone's personal timeline -- as
a string that stretches from Point A to Point Z. Now, if sometime somebody
figures out how to travel back in time, the string goes from Point A to, say,
Point L, loops back to Point G, maybe, then turns back through Point L -- in a
different place -- and on again to Point Z. So if you meet a guy at Point G who
is or will be a time-traveler, there's no telling if this is like his first or
second pass through that moment. And there can be any number of trips into the
past by the same chrononaut, looping again and again at Point G or any other
point. Trust me on this, Bitsy, 'cause I took the trouble to consult experts.

No? Well, never mind, because I mean Dr. Waters wasn't completely sold on his
own theory, and neither was I.

BTW -- that's "by the way," by the way -- I described what I'd seen in the Yale