"Phyllis Eisenstein - In the Western Tradition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Eisenstein Phyllis)

In the Western
Tradition
PHYLLIS EISENSTEIN

It was obvious from his reaction that Holland had never bought time on
the Bubble before. He could scarcely sit still in his chair. "That's him!
That's him!" he shouted. He was grinning like a child on Christmas
morning, surrounded by toys.
I knew how he felt. I would never forget my own first assignment, and
my first view of the man I sought. Holland knew his quarry from
photographs; I had only stone likenesses to guide me. Yet I knew him
immediately, though the statues had been idealized, youthful, flawless.
That was back in the beginning, when almost all of us were involved in the
Life of Jesus Project based in Istanbul. I was assigned to the western
branchтАФthe less important one, I thought. But my hands started to shake
when I saw my man in the Forum, shaking as hard as if I were seeing
Jesus himself, and they kept shaking while I brought his face closer and
closer, close enough that he could have spit in my eye if he had not been
just an image in the Bubble. Augustus Caesar, dead two thousand years,
was in that fellow Bubble operators, and the most significant man in
history. Yes, I knew how Dr. Frederick Holland felt. And no matter how
often I sat at the console, or even just watched another operator at work, I
still experienced a strong echo of that initial thrill every time I saw the
Bubble spring into being from nothingness in a small, bare room. For I
knew that within its confines the dead would walk again. Holland had
known that, I supposed, on an intellectual level; how he knew it as I did, in
his soul.
I sat behind him, a casual visitor to his enterprise. I was there because I
never tired of watching the Bubble and because Alison and I would be
going out to dinner as soon as she finished her shift. To my left, she played
on the computer and gave Holland what he had paid forтАФEllsworth,
Kansas, August 18, 1873:
Wyatt Earp took a seat under the wooden awning that shaded Beebe's
General Store from the scorching afternoon sun. He tipped the chair back
against the weathered clapboard wall and surveyed the street from
beneath the wide brim of his dark hat. Beyond him, the town stretched
hot and dusty to the railroad tracks, and in the distance, long-horned
cattle could be seen moving sluggishly as they grazed on an endless
expanse of prairie grass.
Earp turned his face toward us; gaunt, hollow-cheeked, he appeared to
be in his early twenties, not yet the legend he would become in Dodge and
Tombstone. His eyes focused briefly on something we could not see.
"Shall I turn the viewpoint and catch what he's looking at?" Alison
asked.
Holland shook his head violently. "No, stay where you are. We can check
that out in another session."
A muffled uproar heralded the appearance of two men: they burst from
a doorway down the street, shouting curses over their shoulders.
"The Thompsons," said Holland. "Ben and Bill."
They crossed the square at a run and entered a two-story building