"Fritz Leiber - The Big Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

THE BIG TIME
by Fritz Leiber

Copyright 1961, by Ace Books, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

Magazine version copyright, 1958, by Galaxy Publishing Corp.




1

When shall we three meet again
In thunder, lightning, or in rain?

When the hurlyburly's done.
When the battle's lost and won.
--Macbeth


ENTER THESE HUSSARS

My name is Greta Forzane. Twenty-nine and a party girl would describe me. I was
born in Chicago, of Scandinavian parents, but now I operate chiefly outside space and time--
not in Heaven or Hell, if there are such places, but not in the cosmos or universe you know
either.
I am not as romantically entrancing as the immortal film star who also bears my first
name, but I have a rough-and-ready charm of my own. I need it, for my job is to nurse back to
health and kid back to sanity Soldiers badly roughed up in the biggest war going. This war is
the Change War, a war of time travelers--in fact, our private names for being in this war is
being on the Big Time. Our Soldiers fight by going back to change the past, or even ahead to
change the future, in ways to help our side win the final victory a billion or more years from
now. A long killing business, believe me.
You don't know about the Change War, but it's influencing your lives all the time and
maybe you've had hints of it without realizing.
Have you ever worried about your memory, because it doesn't seem to be bringing
you exactly the same picture of the past from one day to the next? Have you ever been afraid
that your personality was changing because of forces beyond your knowledge or control?
Have you ever felt sure that sudden death was about to jump you from nowhere? Have you
ever been scared of Ghosts--not the storybook kind, but the billions of beings who were once
so real and strong it's hard to believe they'll just sleep harmlessly forever? Have you ever
wondered about those things you may call devils or Demons--spirits able to range through all
time ana space, through the hot hearts of stars and the cold skeleton of space between the
galaxies? Have you ever thought that the whole universe might be a crazy, mixed-up dream?
If you have, you've had hints of the Change War.
How I got recruited into the Change War, how it's conducted, what the two sides are,
why you don't consciously know about it, what I really think about it--you'll learn in due
course.