"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

Charles Vincent grinned and looked down at his misshapen or double
thumb.
"At least I am in good though monotonous company. But what in the
name of triple time is he driving at?"

And it was not long afterward that Vincent was examining cuneiform
tablets in State Museum. These were a broken and not continuous series on
the theory of numbers, tolerably legible to the now encyclopedic Charles
Vincent. And the series read in part:

On the divergence of the basis itself and the confusion caused by --
for it is Five, or it is Six, or Ten or Twelve, or Sixty or One Hundred, or
Three hundred and Sixty or the Double Hundred, the Thousand. The reason, not
clearly understood by the People, is that Six and the Dozen are First, and
Sixty is a compromise in condescending to the people.
For the Five, the Ten are late, and are no older than the People
themselves. It is said, and credited, that the People began to count by
Fives and Tens from the number of fingers on their hands. But before the
People the --, for the reason that they had --, counted by Sixes and
Twelves. But Sixty is the number of time, divisible by both, for both must
live together in Time, though not on the same plane of time --

Much of the rest was scattered. It was while trying to set the
hundreds of unordered clay tablets in proper sequence that Charles Vincent
created the legend of the ghost in the museum.
For he spent his multi-hundred-hour nights there studying and
classifying. Naturally he could not work without light, and naturally he
could be seen when he sat still at his studies. But as the slow-moving
guards attempted to close in on him, he would move to avoid them, and his
speed made him invisible to them. They were a nuisance and had to be
discouraged. He belabored them soundly and they became less eager to try to
capture him.
His only fear was that they would sometime try to shoot him to see
if he were ghost or human. He could avoid a seen shot which would come at no
more than two and a half times his own greatest speed. But an unperceived
shot could penetrate dangerously, even fatally, before he twisted away from
it.
Vincent had fathered legends of other ghosts, that of the Central
Library, that of the University Library, that of the John Charles Underwood
Jr. Technical Library. This plurality of ghosts tended to cancel out each
other and bring believers into ridicule. Even those who had seen him as a
ghost did not admit that they believed in ghosts.

Charles Vincent had gone back to Dr. Mason for his monthly checkup.
"You look terrible," said the doctor. "Whatever it is, you have
changed. If you have the means you should, take a long rest."
"I have the means, said Vincent, "and that is just what I will do.
I'll take a rest for a year or two."
He had begun to begrudge the time that he must spend at the world's
pace. From this time on he was regarded as a recluse. He was silent and