"Damon Knight - Anachron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

substitute an exact replica made of concrete and plaster of Paris, with the
same mass, albedo and so on as the genuine moon, it would make no measurable
difference in the universe as we perceive it -- and therefore we cannot
certainly say that it hasn't happened. Nor, I may add, does it make any
difference whether it has or not."
"'When there's no one about on the quad,'" said Peter.
"Yes. A basic and, as a natural consequence, a meaningless problem of
philosophy. Except," he added, "in this one particular manifestation."
He stared at the cloudy sphere. "You'll excuse me, won't you, Peter?
I've got to work on this."
"When will you publish, do you suppose?"
"Immediately. That's to say, in a week or two."
"Don't do it till you've talked it over with me, will you? I have a
notion about it."
Harold looked at him sharply. "Commercial?"
"In a way."
"No," said Harold. "This is not the sort of thing one patents or keeps
secret, Peter."
"Of course. I'll see you at dinner, I hope?"
"I think so. If I forget, knock on the door, will you?"
"Yes. Until then."
"Until then."

At dinner, Peter asked only two questions. "Have you found any
possibility of changing the time your thing reaches -- from the seventeenth
century to the eighteenth, for example, or from Monday to Tuesday?"
"Yes, as a matter of fact. Amazing. It's lucky that I had a rheostat
already in the circuit; I wouldn't dare turn the current off. Varying the
amperage varies the time set. I've had it up to what I think was Wednesday of
last week -- at any rate, my smock was lying over the workbench where I left
it, I remember, Wednesday afternoon. I pulled it out. A curious sensation,
Peter -- I was wearing the same smock at the time. And then the sphere went
opaque and of course the smock vanished. That must have been myself, coming
into the room."
"And the future?"
"Yes. Another funny thing, I've had it forward to various times in the
near future, and the machine itself is still there, but nothing's been done to
it -- none of the things I'm thinking I might do. That might be because of the
conservation of events, again, but I rather think not. Still farther forward
there are cloudy areas, blanks; I can't see anything that isn't in existence
now, apparently, but here, in the next few days, there's nothing of that.
"It's as if I were going away. Where do you suppose I'm going?"

Harold's abrupt departure took place between midnight and morning. He
packed his own grip, it would seem, left unattended, and was seen no more. It
was extraordinary, of course, that he should have left at all, but the details
were in no way odd. Harold had always detested what he called "the tyranny of
the valet." He was, as everyone knew, a most independent man.
On the following day Peter made some trifling experiments with the
time-sphere. From the sixteenth century he picked up a scent bottle of