"Murray Leinster - A Logic Named Joe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

bless him for it. At the time, though, I'd protested. I'd cut off a length of sash cord to tie to my ankle. To
my ankle I tied it. Firmly. This, I considered, was my lifeline. This was the cord I thought I'd seen Joe tie
to a steam-radiator. But he'd tied the other cord insteadтАФand somehow I did not notice. It was an error
on my part, and a singularly happy one.
But not at the moment. I hauled on the cord from my ankle instead of the one fastenedтАФI didn't
know how inadequatelyтАФto my belt. The rope from my ankle was fastened only there. The other end
came unresistingly as I pulled. The cut-off place came into the brownish-purple mist with me. And when I
saw it, I knew a moment of such anguish as I would not wish even on you, my erstwhile rival and
great-etc. Every hair on my head stood on end and cracked like a whiplash. My eyes bugged out. I was
in a place that can only be described as nowhere. I wanted to get out. But I'd pulled into the hole with me
what I thought was my only link to a world of schoolteachers, alcoholic cats andтАФJoe.
I felt a pure, hysterical aversion to the end of that cord. I hadn't meant to pull it to where Joe couldn't
yank it back. I had. I had a frenzied impulse to return it to him. So I threw that cord hysterically away
from me, into the puce-colored mist
And it tickled you on the back of your neck.
This is the crucial moment, Charles. When you and Laki and Stan and Hari and of course Ginny
stand in your cellar rumpus room, everybody will have read this narrative. But you, Charles, will be
savagely determined to prove it sheer nonsense. And your friends have often displayed what you
consider peculiar ideas of humor. When you have pointed out the conspicuous absence of anybody from
an earlier age in the room, and are pointing out triumphantly to them that this story is all eyewash and that
your great-great-etc.-grandfather is not going to visit you that morning from fourteen centuries previous.
When you have done all that, Charles, the rope will tickle the back of your neck.
 You will whirl. You will see an unfamiliar type of cordage in mid-air. You will suspect Hari and Stan
of a practical joke. Your face will turn purple and you will yank at the rope, while you howl that it is all
blank-blank foolishness.
And at that moment I will fall on your head out of the thin air above you, and wind up sitting on your
stomach as you flop on the floor. Nearly the only gratitude I feel toward you, Charles, is for breaking my
fall in that way. I might have bumped myself in a six-foot fall for which I wasтАФwill beтАФunprepared.
Doubtless this would be an appropriate place to speculate on why, when I pulled a piece of sash cord
from the twentieth century and heaved it from me in horror, it should tickle your neck in the thirty-fourth
century. But I admit candidly that I haven't any ideas on the subject. Professor Hadley's inadvertent
time-transporter worked that way. I'm going to let it go at that.
I sat up and gazed blankly at you. You thought I was a practical joker, hired or persuaded to play a
part. You panted at me. And I was a bit embarrassed. You weren't Joe, whom I'd hoped would pull me
out of nowhere. You were a stranger to me then. You were a red-faced, rather foolish-looking stranger,
drawing in your breath to swear.
So I said politely, "Doctor Livingstone, I presume?"
To you this was further evidence of a put-up job. You heaved up mightily, gasping. I got off your
stomach and tried to help you up with proper courtesy. But you swung wildly, connected, and I went
banging into the wall. Then, your great-great-etc.-grandmother tells me indignantly, you grabbed a chair
and prepared to commit mayhem on me. Hardly the way to treat a distinguished progenitor, Charles, let
me tell you.
This was the first moment when your great-and-so-on-grandmother felt really certain you were not
the gentle soul she had hoped. Moreover, knowing that I was destined to woo and win her, she
forestalled any hindrance to her tender dreamings by swinging on you with a hartlegame bat from the
rumpus-room equipment nearby. And when you collapsed, she, with the fine competence of which small
and beautiful women are capable in emergencies, discovered a piece of sash cord fastened to my belt in
the back, untied it, and deftly knotted it to a piece of furniture for later reference.
Here, perhaps, my letter to you could end. The other events in your rumpus-room, your time, your
historical period, followed an absolutely inevitable pattern.