"Joe Haldeman - No Future In It" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

"Probably not, here and now. You get quite a crowd clustered around historically
important events. You can't see them, of course."
"I can see you."
He shrugged. "Something went wrong. Power failure or something; someone tripped over
a cable. Happens."
"They didn't try to come back and rescue you?"
"How could they? There are lots of futures but only one past. Once I materialized here, I
wasn't in my own past anymore. See?" "So you can kill your own grandfather," I said.
"Why would I want to do that? He's a nice old bird."
"No, I mean, there's no paradox involved? If you killed him before you were born, you
wouldn't cease to exist?"
"Of course not. I'd have to be there to kill him." He sipped. "For that matter, I could go
back and kill myself, as a boy. If I could afford it. Travel gets more expensive, the closer you
get to the present. Like compressing an infinitely tough spring."
"Hold it." I had him. "I'll buy another round if you can talk your way out of this one. The
Earth is moving all the time, spinning around, going around the Sun; the Sun's moving
through space. How the hell do you aim this time machine?"
He bleared at me. "Don't they teach you anything about relativity? Look, if you get up
from the bar, go to the john, and come back in a couple of minutesтАФthe bar's moved
thousands of miles. But it's still here. You're on the same track, that's all."
"But I'm talking about time and you're talking about space!"
"There's a difference?" He drained his glass and slid it toward me with one finger.
I decided I'd stay long enough to find out what his con was. Maybe do a one-pager for a
crime magazine. I ordered him another double. "You folks from the future can sure hold
your liquor."
"Couple of centuries of medicine," he said. "I'm ninety-two years old." He looked about
seventy.
Looked like I was going to have to push him for the gaff. "Seems to me you could be a
millionaire. Knowing where to invest . . ."
"It's not that easy. I tried. I should have left well enough alone." His drink came and he
stuck his fingertip in it; flicked a drop away. "I'm sort of a Moslem," he said. "Not supposed
to drink a drop of liquor.
"People try it all the time; there's no law against it. But put yourself in this position: you're
going to deliberately strand yourself two hundred years in the past. What do you do for
capital? Buy old money from collectors?"
"You could take gold and diamonds."
"Sure. But if you can afford thatтАФand time travel isn't cheap eitherтАФwhy not invest it in
your own present? Remember, once you materialize, you aren't in your own past anymore.
You can never tell what might have changed. People do try it, though. Usually they take
gadgets."
"Does it work?"
"Who knows? They can't come back to tell about it."
"Couldn't they build their own time machine, go back to the future?"
"Aren't you hearing me? There's no such thing as the future. Even if you could travel
forward, there's no way you could find the right one."
Somebody came into the bar; I waited until the door eased shut, muting the traffic noise.
"So what happened to you? You made some bad investments?"
"In spades. Seemed like a sure thing.
"Let me explain. Where I come from, almost nobody lives on Earth, just caretakers and
the time travel people. It's like a big park, a big museum. Most of us live in orbital