"Henry Kuttner - Mimsy Were The Borogoves" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

MIMSY WERE THE BOROGOVES

ThereтАЩs no use trying to describe either Unthahorsten or his sur-roundings, because, for one thing, a good many
million years had passed and, for another, Unthahorsten wasnтАЩt on Earth, technically speaking. He was doing the
equivalent of standing in the equivalent of a labora-tory. He was preparing to test his time machine.
Having turned on the power, Unthahorsten suddenly realized that the Box was empty. Which wouldnтАЩt do at all.
The device needed a control, a three-dimensional solid which would react to the conditions of another age. Otherwise
Unthahorsten couldnтАЩt tell, on the machineтАЩs return, where and when it had been. Whereas a solid in the Box would
automatically be subject to the entropy and cosmic-ray bombardment of the other era, and Unthahorsten could
measure the changes, both qualitative and quantitative, when the machine returned. The Calcula-tors could then get to
work and, presently, tell Unthahorsten that the Box had briefly visited A.D. 1,000,000, A.D. boo or A.D. i, as the case might be.
Not that it mattered, except to Unthahorsten. But he was childish in many respects.
There was little time to waste. The Box was beginning to glow and shiver. Unthahorsten stared around wildly, fled
into the next glossatch and groped in a storage bin there. He came up with an armful of peculiar-looking stuff. Uh-huh.
Some of the discarded toys of his son Snowen, which the boy had brought with him when he had passed over from
Earth, after mastering the necessary technique. Well, Snowen needed this junk no longer. He was conditioned, and
had put away childish things. Besides, though UnthahorstenтАЩs wife kept the toys for sentimental reasons, the
experiment was more important.
Unthahorsten left the glossatch and dumped the assortment into the Box, slamming the cover shut before the
warning signal flashed. The Box went away. The manner of its departure hurt UnthahorstenтАЩs eyes.
He waited.
And he waited.
Eventually he gave up and built another time machine, with identical
results. Snowen hadnтАЩt been annoyed by the loss of his old toys, nor had SnowenтАЩs mother, so Unthahorsten cleaned
out the bin and dumped the remainder of his sonтАЩs childhood relies in the second time machineтАЩs Box.
According to his calculations, this one should have appeared on Earth in the latter part of the nineteenth century,
A.D. If that actually oc-curred, the device remained there.
Disgusted, Unthahorsten decided to make no more time machines. But the mischief had been done. There were two
of them, and the
first


Scott Paradine found it while he was playing hooky from the Glen-dale Grammar School. There was a geography test
that day, and Scott saw no sense in memorizing place namesтАФwhich, in the nineteen- forties, was a fairly sensible
theory. Besides, it was the sort of warm spring day, with a touch of coolness in the breeze, which invited a boy to lie
down in a field and stare at the occasional clouds till he fell asleep. Nuts to geography! Scott dozed.
About noon he got hungry, so his stocky legs carried him to a nearby store. There he invested his small hoard with
penurious care and a sub-lime disregard for his gastric juices. He went down by the creek to feed.
Having finished his supply of cheese, chocolate and cookies, and hav-ing drained the soda-pop bottle to its dregs,
Scott caught tadpoles and studied them with a certain amount of scientific curiosity. He did not persevere. Something
tumbled down the bank and thudded into the muddy ground near the water, so Scott, with a wary glance around,
hurried to investigate.
It was a box. It was, in fact, the Box. The gadgetry hitched to it meant little to Scott, though he wondered why it was
so fused and burned. He pondered. With his jack-knife he pried and probed, his tongue sticking out from a corner of
his mouthтАФ Hm-m-m. Nobody was around. Where had the box come from? Somebody must have left it here, and
sliding soil had dislodged it from its precarious perch.
тАЬThatтАЩs a helix,тАЭ Scott decided, quite erroneously. It was helical, but it wasnтАЩt a helix, because of the dimensional
warp involved. Had the thing been a model airplane, no matter how complicated, it would have held few mysteries to
Scott. As it was, a problem was posed. Something told Scott that the device was a lot more complicated than the
spring motor he had deftly dismantled last Friday.