"Charles L. Harness-Child by Chronos" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

"What do you want?" mother whispered.
In the length of time it took me to get my breath back I decided that if I couldn't have him, she couldn't
either. There comes a limit to all things. We were racing towards the showdown.
 He always kept his old pistol on the table ledge, the one he'd brought with him. Soundlessly I reached
for it and found it. I knew it was too dark for mother to see what I was now pointing toward her.
I had a clairvoyant awareness of my intent and its consequences. I even knew the place and time.
Murder was building up in Doctor John Brown's bedroom at Skyridge, and the time was five minutes of
midnight, June 3, 1977.
"If that goes off," whispered my mother calmly, "it'll probably wake your father."
"My-- who?" I gasped. The gun butt landed on my toe; I hardly knew I'd dropped it.
I heard what she said. But I suddenly realized it didn't make any sense. They'd have told me long
before, if it had been true. And he wouldn't have looked at me the way he did, day after day. She was
lying.
She continued quietly: "Do you really want him?"
When one woman asks this question of another, it is ordinarily intended as an announcement of a
property right, not a query, and the tone of voice ranges from subtle sardonicism to savage gloating.
But mother's voice was quiet and even.
"Yes!" I said harshly.
"Badly enough to have a child by him?"
I couldn't stop now. "Yes."
"Can you swim?"
"Yes," I parroted stupidly. It was obviously not a time for logic or coherence. There we were, two
witches bargaining in life and death, while the bone of our contention slumbered soundly just beyond us.
She whispered: "Do you know when he is from?"
"You mean where?"
"When. He's from 1957. In 1957 he fell into a magnetronic field-- into my 1977 haystack. The lens--
out there-- is focused-- "
"-- on 1957?" I breathed numbly.
"Early 1957," she corrected. "It's focused on a day a couple of months prior to the moment he fell into
the lens. If you really want him, all you've got to do its jump through the lens, find him in 1957, and hang
on to him. Don't let him fall through into the magnetronic field."
I licked my lips. "And suppose he does anyway?"
"I'll be waiting for him."
"But you already have him. If I should go back, how can I be sure of finding him in time? Suppose he's
on safari in South Africa?"
"You'll find him right here. He spent the spring and summer of 1957 here at Skyridge. The lodge has
always been his property."
I couldn't see her eyes, but I knew they were laughing at me.
"The matter of a child," I said curtly. "What's that got to do with him?"
"Your only chance of holding him permanently," she said coolly, "is the child."
"The child?"
I couldn't make any sense out of it. I stopped trying.
For a full minute there was silence, backgrounded by the gentle rasp of Johnny's breathing and the
singing water twenty years away.
I blinked my eyes rapidly.
I was going to have Johnny. I was going back to 1957. Suddenly I felt jaunty, exhilarated.
The hall clock began to chime midnight.
Within a few seconds, June 3, 1997 would pass into history. Mother would be washed up, a
has-been, unable to predict even the weather.
I kicked off my slippers and pajamas. I gauged the distance across the balcony. My voice got away