"Jack Finney - From Time to Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Finney Jack)

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From TimeTo Time
Jack Finney
PROLOGUE
The man at the end of the long table-he wore a trimmed black beard streaked white at the ends of his
mouth-looked up at the wall clock: three minutes past seven. "Okay, he said to the dozen men and
women around the table, "we better get started. But he turned once more to look at the open doorway
behind him, and so did everyone else. No one appeared, though, no footsteps approached along the
wood-floored hall outside, and he turned back to the group. He was the oldest of them, a trim youthful
forty, wearing blue denims and a plaid cotton shirt-and the only full professor. "Audrey, you want to
begin?

"Sure. She bent up the clasp of a manila envelope on the table beside her purse, and partly pulled out a
newspaper folded to quarter size. Only a portion of its masthead was visible, reading, vi'- York Courier,
and one or two people smiled at what they took to be the deliberate drama of this. All were casually
dressed, casually seated; aged from twenty-five to forty. This was the little Chemistry Department library,
cheerful with shelved books and framed sepia photographs of the old laboratories. It was early evening,
September and still light, and here in Durham still warm. Someone had opened the three tall
round-topped windows, and the\' could hear birds wrangling in the campus trees.

"So far my network is only four people, Audrey said. Her hand, wearing a plain wedding ring, lay on the
tabletop, curved forefinger just touching the word Courier. "If you can call that a network. One is my
brother-in-law, and I honestly never thought he'd turn up a thing. But he has. A friend of his owns a floor
covering store of some kind in Brooklyn, New York. One of his men was working in an old house there,
tearing up worn-out kitchen linoleum, and underneath- She stopped: rapid footsteps sounded woodenly
outside, and they all turned to watch the doorway. But the hurrying figure, glancing in at them, moved on
by. "Under the linoleum the floor was covered about half an inch thick with newspapers. To cushion it, I
suppose. And of course he looked at some of the papers, read the old comics-you know. I envied him.
They were all really old, been there for decades. And he kept this one. She drew the folded newspaper
from its envelope, and passed it to the man beside her.

He opened it, spreading it flat on the tabletop, and the others around the table hunched forward to look.
The New-York Courier, read the complete masthead, and the man who'd opened it began reading the
headline aloud. " President Urges Trade Recip-'

"No, not the news, the date.

"Tuesday, February 22, 1916.

After a moment she said, slightly annoyed and disappointed, "Well, don't you see? There was no
New-York Courier in 1916. It went out of business-I looked this up-on June 8, 1909.

"Hey, a woman across the table from her murmured, and someone else said, "Looks like a good one.
Let's see that thing, and the paper was passed down to him.
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