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

settlements, some on other planets.
"I really was a history professor, specializing in the history of technology. I saved up my
money to go back and see the first flight to the Moon."
"That was in '70?"
"No, '69. It was during the launch when the accident happened. Nobody noticed me
materializing; I didn't even notice until I tried to walk through someone afterward.
"Fortunately, that was a time when everybody dressed as they damn well pleased, so my
clothes didn't look especially outrageous. I bummed my way down to Homestead and picked
up some work sorting tomatoes, that kind of thing. Saved up enough to get fake IDs made
up, eventually went back to school and wound up teaching again. Married along the way."
"The one who tried to put you in the peanut jar."
"That's right. Here's what happened. If there was one sure thing to invest in, it was space.
My wife didn't agree, but there was no way I could tell her why I was so sure.
"I went ahead and invested heavily in space industriesтАФreally heavily, buying on margin,
wheeling, dealingтАФbut my wife thought it was all going into a conservative portfolio of
municipals. I even snitched some stationery from our accountant and wrote up annual reports
to show her."
"I think I see what's coming." Not a bad story.
"Yeah. The Soviet-American Orbital Nonproliferation Treaty, the goddamned Proxmire
Bill."
"Well, killer satellites ..."
"That's the kicker. That's really the kicker. In my future's past, it was the killer satellites
that ended the possibility of nuclear war forever! They finally scrapped the missiles and
settled down to shouting across tables."
"Well, you can't think we're in any danger of nuclear war now. Not realistically."
"Yeah. I liked our way better. Anyway, the bottom dropped out. I had to tell my wife that
we were broke and in debt; I had to tell her everything. I thought I knew her. I thought she
would believe. The rest is pretty obvious."
"Sponge boats."
"Right." He took a long drink and stared moodily into the cloudy mirror behind the bar.
"That's it?" No scam?
"That's it. Write it up. You'll never sell it."
I checked my watch. Could just make the 1:35 to Atlanta, get in a half day at the
typewriter. "Well, I gotta run. Thanks for the story, Bill."
I stood up and put my hand on his shoulder. "Take it easy on the sauce, okay? You're no
spring chicken anymore." "Sure." He never looked at me.
On the way to the subway terminal it occurred to me that I shouldn't try to sell the thing as
a human-interest feature. Just write it up as fiction and I could hawk it to Planet Stories or
one of those rags.
The ticket machine gave me an argument about changing a hundred-ruble note and I had
to go find a conductor. Then there were repairs going on and it took us twenty minutes to get
to Atlanta; I had to sprint to make my Seattle connection.
Space settlements. Time travel. Nobody would swallow that kind of bull, not in 1924.