"Geoffrey A. Landis - Ripples in the Dirac Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

getting trashed. I'd been doing that a lot, caught between omnipotence and despair. It was 1967. 'Frisco
thenтАФit was the middle of the hippy eraтАФseemed somehow appropriate.

There was a girl, sitting at a table with a group from the university. I walked over to her table and invited
myself to sit down. I told her she didn't exist, that her whole world didn't exist, it was all created by the
fact that I was watching, and would disappear back into the sea of unreality as soon as I stopped
looking. Her name was Lisa, and she argued back. Her friends, bored, wandered off, and in a while Lisa
realized just how drunk I was. She dropped a bill on the table and walked out into the foggy night.

I followed her out. When she saw me following, she clutched her purse and bolted.

He was suddenly there under the streetlight. For a second I thought he was a girl. He had bright blue
eyes and straight brown hair down to his shoulders. He wore an embroidered Indian shirt, with a silver
and turquoise medallion around his neck and a guitar slung across his back. He was lean, almost stringy,
and moved like a dancer or a karate master. But it didn't occur to me to be afraid of him.

He looked me over. "That won't solve your problem, you know," he said.

And instantly I was ashamed. I was no longer sure exactly what I'd had in mind or why I'd followed her.
It had been years since I'd first fled my death, and I had come to think of others as unreal, since nothing I
could do would permanently affect them. My head was spinning. I slid down the wall and sat down,
hard, on the sidewalk. What had I come to?

He helped me back into the bar, fed me orange juice and pretzels, and got me to talk. I told him
everything. Why not, since I could unsay anything I said, undo anything I did? But I had no urge to. He
listened to it all, saying nothing. No one else had ever listened to the whole story before. I can't explain
the effect it had on me. For uncountable years I'd been alone, and then, if only for a momentтАж It hit me
with the intensity of a tab of acid. If only for a moment, I was not alone.

We left arm in arm. Half a block away, Dancer stopped, in front of an alley. It was dark.

"Something not quite right here." His voice had a puzzled tone.

I pulled him back. "Hold on. You don't want to go down thereтАФ" He pulled free and walked in. After a
slight hesitation, I followed.

The alley smelled of old beer, mixed with garbage and stale vomit. In a moment, my eyes became
adjusted to the dark.

Lisa was cringing in a corner behind some trash cans. Her clothes had been cut away with a knife, and
lay scattered around. Blood showed dark on her thighs and one arm. She didn't seem to see us. Dancer
squatted down next to her and said something soft. She didn't respond. He pulled off his shirt and
wrapped it around her, then cradled her in his arms and picked her up. "Help me get her to my
apartment."

"Apartment, hell. We'd better call the police," I said.

"Call the pigs? Are you crazy? You want them to rape her, too?"

I'd forgotten; this was the sixties. Between the two of us, we got her to Dancer's VW bug and took her