"Robert A Heinlein - Elsewhen-proofread" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

"I'll try that, too." It was Jenkins.
"I'll take the remote-possibilities track," put in Helen Fisher.
"That takes care of everybody but Miss Ross," commented the professor. "I'm afraid you will have to take a branch path in probability. Does that suit you?"
She nodded. "I was going to ask for it."
"That's fine. All of these records contain the suggestion for you to return to this room two hours from now, figured along this time track. Put on your earphones. The records run thirty minutes. I'll start them and the ball together."
He swung a glittering many-faceted sphere from a hook in the ceiling, started it whirling, and turned a small spotlight on it. Then he turned off the other lights, and started all the records by throwing a master switch. The scintillating ball twirled round and round, slowed and reversed and twirled back again. Doctor Frost turned his eyes away to keep from being fascinated by it. Presently he slipped out into the hall for a smoke. Half an hour passed and there came the single note of a gong. He hurried back and switched on the light.
Four of the five had disappeared.
The remaining figure was Howard Jenkins, who opened his eyes and blinked at the light. "Well, Doctor, I guess it didn't work."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "No? Look around you."
The younger man glanced about him. "Where are the others?"
"Where? Anywhere," replied Frost, with a shrug, "and way when."
Jenkins jerked off his earphones and jumped to his feet. "Doctor, what have you done to Estelle?"
Frost gently disengaged a hand from his sleeve. "I haven't done anything, Howard. She's out on another time track."
"But I meant to go with her!"
"And I tried to send you with her."
"But why didn't I go?"
"I can't say-probably the suggestion wasn't strong enough to overcome your skepticism. But don't be alarmed, son-we expect her back in a couple of hours, you know."
"Don't be alarmed!-that's easy to say. I didn't want her to try this damn fool stunt in the first place, but I knew I couldn't change her mind, so I wanted to go along to look out for her-she's so impractical! But see here, Doc-where are their bodies? I thought we would just stay here in the room in a trance."
"Apparently you didn't understand me. These other time tracks are real, as real as this one we are in. Their whole beings have gone off on other tracks, as if they had turned down a side street."
"But that's impossible-it contradicts the law of the conservation of energy!"
"You must recognize a fact when you see one- they are gone. Besides, it doesn't contradict the law; it simply extends it to include the total universe."
Jenkins rubbed a hand over his face. "I suppose so. But in that case, anything can happen to her- she could even be killed out there. And I can't do a damn thing about it. Oh, I wish we had never seen this damned seminar!"
The professor placed an arm around his shoulders. "Since you can't help her, why not calm down? Besides, you have no reason to believe that she is in any danger. Why borrow trouble? Let's go out to the kitchen and open a bottle of beer while we wait for them." He gently urged him toward the door.
After a couple of beers and a few cigarettes, Jenkins was somewhat calmed down. The professor made conversation.
"How did you happen to sign up for this course, Howard?"
"It was the only course I could take with Estelle."
"I thought so. I let you take it for reasons of my own. I knew you weren't interested in speculative philosophy, but I thought that your hard-headed materialism would hold down some of the loose thinking that is likely to go on in such a class. You've been a help to me. Take Helen Fisher for example. She is prone to reason brilliantly from insufficient data. You help to keep her down to earth."
"To be frank. Doctor Frost, I could never see the need for all this high-falutin discussion. I like facts."
"But you engineers are as bad as metaphysicians- you ignore any fact that you can't weigh in scales. If you can't bite it, it's not real. You believe in a mechanistic, deterministic universe, and ignore the facts of human consciousness, human will, and human freedom of choice-facts that you have directly experienced."
'But those things can be explained in terms of reflexes."
The professor spread his Rands. "You sound just like Martha Ross-she can explain anything in terms of Bible-belt fundamentalism. Why don't both of you admit that there a few things you don't understand?" He paused and cocked his head. "Did you hear something?"
"I think I did."
"Let's check. It's early, but perhaps one of them is back."
They hurried to the study, where they were confronted by an incredible and awe-inspiring sight.
Floating in the air near the fireplace was a figure robed in white and shining with a soft mother-of- pearl radiance. While they stood hesitant at the door, the figure turned its face to them and they saw that it had the face of Martha Ross, cleansed and purified to an unhuman majesty. Then it spoke.
"Peace be unto you, my brothers." A wave of peace and lovingldndness flowed over them like a mother's blessing. The figure approached them, and they saw, curving from its shoulders, the long, white, sweeping wings of a classical angel. Frost cursed under his breath in a dispassionate monotone.
"Do not be afraid, I have come back, as you asked me to. To explain and to help you."
The Doctor found his voice. "Are you Martha Ross?"
"I answer to that name."
"What happened after you put on the ear-phones?"
"Nothing. I slept for a while. When I woke, I went home."
"Nothing else? How do you explain your appearance?"
"My appearance is what you earthly children expect of the Lord's Redeemed. In the course of time I served as a missionary in South America. There it was required of me that I give up my mortal me in the service of the Lord. And so I entered the Eternal City."
"You went to Heaven?"
"These many eons I have sat at the foot of the Golden Throne and sung hosannas to His name."
Jenkins interrupted them. "Tell me, Martha-or Saint Martha-Where is Estelle? Have you seen her?"
The figure turned slowly and faced him. "Fear not."
"But tell me where she is!"
"It is not needful."
"That's no help," he answered bitterly.