"James E. Gunn - Crisis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

stretched his arms high above his head in an instinctive gesture of loosening sleep-tightened muscles.
When he stood up, he was of medium height. He was pleasant looking, but nothing more, and slender; he
had brown, curly hair and dark eyes and skin that looked evenly tanned. He gazed around him with the
innocent absorption of a newly born infant and then his eyes stopped at a slip of white paper stuck to the
right-hand side of the dresser mirror. He stood up and looked at it. "Read the letter in the top right-hand
drawer," it said.

The man stood naked in front of the mirror and looked down at the drawer as if he didn't want to open it.
Finally he moved his hand forward and pulled on the handle. A long white envelope lay just inside the
drawer, crosswise, the return address of a hotel on its upper left-hand corner. The man reached into the
drawer and removed the envelope. He tore it open. Inside were two sheets of hotel stationery with black
hand-lettering on them.

"Your name is Bill Johnson," they read. "You have just saved the U.S. space program from termination,
and you don't remember. You can find references to the political decisions in newspapers and magazines,
but you will find no mention of the part you played.

"For this there are several possible explanations, including the likelihood I may be lying or deceived or
insane. But the explanation on which you must act is that I have told you the truth: you are a man born in
a future that has almost used up all hope; you were sent to this time and place to alter the events that
created that future.

"Am I telling the truth? The only evidence you have is your apparently unique ability to foresee
consequencesтАФit comes like a vision, not of the future because the future can be changed, but of what
will happen if events take their natural course, if someone does not act, if you do not intervene.
"But each time you intervene, no matter how subtly, you change the future from which you came. You
exist in this time and outside of time and in the future, and so each change makes you forget.

"I wrote this letter last night to tell you what I know, just as I learned about myself a few weeks ago in a
similar manner, for I am you and we are one, and we have done this many times before.тАж"

The letter was signed "Bill Johnson."

The man in the room found a pen on the desk and wrote "Bill Johnson" under the name on the letter. The
signatures looked identical. He took the letter into the bathroom, tore it into small pieces, let the pieces
flutter into the toilet bowl, and flushed them away. After he had finished showeringтАФhe did not need to
shaveтАФhe collected a few toilet articles in a small plastic bag he found on the lavatory, and brought them
to the dresser. The drawers were empty. In an imitation-leather suitcase resting on a rack beside the
dresser he found clean underwear.

A shirt, a jacket, and a pair of pants were hanging in the closet. He put on the clothing along with the
brown shoes that were on the closet floor.

In the pocket of the coat he found a billfold: in the billfold were one hundred and forty-three dollars, a
Visa charge card, and a plastic-encased social security card. The last two bore the name of Bill Johnson.
On the dresser were a few coins, a plastic door-entry card, and a black pocket comb. He put them in his
pants pockets. Finally he faced the cyclopean stare of the television set in the corner and pushed buttons
until he found the one that turned it on. In a moment the screen was filled with the face of a news
announcer, replaced occasionally by films and maps, but the controlled hysteria of the announcer's voice
continued without interruption or variety, except when his voice and face were replaced by those of other