"Geoffrey A. Landis - Interlulde at the Circus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

sightseeing."
"So how do we get back?"
"We can't."
"Don't say that. Please don't say that."
"We can't get back to the exact universe we came from. There are an infinite number, and it would take
forever to find the right one."
"No. No, no, no."
"Afraid so, old man. But we probably can find one where English is spoken. We both do, so such worlds
as ours could not be so totally improbable."
"You mean, to go back and back again; to keep searching, until we find one that we can fit in."
"That's the best we can hope for" She paused. "Where is your machine? Is it big enough for two?"
He shook his head. Barely big enough for one. I hid it in a grape arbor out past the hills. We must take
yours."
She grimaced, and opened the neck of her shirt slightly to expose the network of silvery mesh sheathing
her body. "I wear mine. It can only take one."
"Can we modify it?" She shook her head. "Or mine?"
She shook her head again. "I couldn't; and you clearly don't know enough to. We must search
separately."
"And if we find not what we seek? Shall we meet again? Perhaps, by the fountain with the marble
dolphins? An hour hence?" She shook her head. "But why not? Though we may search for years, still we
can return here but an hour hence."
"No. Because there is no such thing as the past. In another interpretation of Wheeler's hypothesis, not
only do multiple futures radiate from each point in spacetime, but multiple pasts as well. Every possible
past that leads to a given observable present is equally real."
"So?"
"So, once we jump to the future, we return to different pasts. No, once we leave, we will never see each
other again."
"I see." He paused. "So this chance meeting is just a brief interlude, never to be repeated." The plaza was
almost empty now, except for the peacocks squabbling with the pigeons for the right to scratch the refuse
for scraps. Vendors folded up their tents as the distant horns of the arena echoed from the walls with the
roar of the crowd. "And we search, with no hope of finding, endlessly. Or until we tire and settle for what
we can find." He was silent for a moment, looking at her. "We could end the search now. We could
make a home here, together."
With him? Here? "Stay if you will. For myself, I will journey onward. Even if I never find a time to call
home, I have yet to tire of the journey."
"We could..." He sighed. "No, I see it could never be. Still, I am glad we have met, though briefly, and
never again. And so we say farewell."
She looked at him, seeing him dressed as he was, then imagining him in a lab coat, in a tunic, in a kilt, in a
skin-tight jumpsuit, in a thousand million different incarnations. Never repeated? She knew their meeting
would be repeated a billion billion times, in all the possible variations, in all the possible Romes.
"Au revoir," she said.

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Copyright 1992 by Geoffrey A. Landis
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