"Henry Kuttner - The Time Axis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"Now I show it to you," De Kalb said and held out the package. "Put it on the tableтАФso. Now draw
up a chair. Remove the wrappings. Excellent. And nowтАФ"

They were both leaning forward, watching me expectantly. I glanced from them to the battered box,
then back again. It was a tarnished blue-white rectangle, battered, smudged with dirt, perfecly
plain.

"It is of no known metal," De Kalb said. "Some alloy, I think. It was found fifteen years ago in
an excavation in Crete and sent to me unopened. Not intentionally. Nobody has ever been able to
open it until recently. It is, as you may have guessed, a puzzle box. It took me fourteen years to
learn the trick that would unlock it. It is also apparently indestructible. I shall now perform
the trick for you."

His hands moved upon the battered surface. I saw his nails whiten now and then as he put pressure
on it.

"Now," he said. "It opens. But I shall not watch. Letta,

will you? No, I think it will be better for us both if we look away while Mr. CortlandтАФ"

I stopped listening ^along about then. For the box was slowly opening.

It opened like a jewel. Or like an unfolding flower that had as many facets as a jewel. I had
expected a lid to lift but nothing of the sort happened. There was movement. There were facets and
planes sliding and shifting and turning as though hinged, but what had seemed to be a box changed
and reassembled and unfolded before me until it wasтАФwhat? As much a jewel as anything. Angles,
planes, a shape and a shining.



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Simultaneously there was motion in my own mind. As a tuning fork responds to a struck note, so
something like a vibration bridged the gap between the box and my brain. As a book opens, as
leaves turn, a book opened and leaves turned in my mind.

All time compressed itself into that blinding second. There was a shifting reorientation, motions
infinitely fast that fitted and meshed with such precision the book and my mind were one.

The Record opened itself inside my brain. Complete, whole, a history and a vision, it hung for
that one instant lucid and detailed in my mind. And for that moment outside time I did comprehend.
But the mind could not retain it all. It flashed out and burned along my nerves and then it faded
and was only a pulse, a glimpse, hanging on like an after-image in my memory. I had seenтАФand
forgotten.

But I had not forgotten everything.

Across a gulf of inconceivable eons a Face looked at me from red sky and empty earth. The Face of