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

privilege."
And so it was. And will be. One does not meet even a fifty-one-times-removed grandson every day.
There was a scraping sound. Hari turned pale. Stan jumped. Somehow, I think that up to this
moment they had not quite fully believed. But that scraping sound . . . Ginny had competently untied a
piece of sash cord from my belt in the back and fastened it to a chair. It had reached up to the ceiling.
Having admitted my failure to notice that JoeтАФback in the laboratoryтАФhad tied a cord to my belt with a
very clumsy granny-knot, I don't feel I have to justify my not connecting the facts of time-travel with that
piece of rope. Not up to this moment. But Ginny had realized from the beginning. She'd been previously
informed. I'm informing her now. She'd tied the cord to a chair, and some fourteen centuries away my
colleague Joe was dragging on the cord. He'd taken his time about it!
Ginny said shakily, "IтАФguess we'd better hurry. . . ."
She was a little bit scared. To tell the truth, so was I. I said somehow hoarsely, "I'll stay here if you'd
ratherтАФ"
But I'd read this letter. And I feltтАФwell, Charles, perhaps you can never understand how magnificent
I felt when Ginny smiled at me and put her hand in mine and said to Laki, "You might try to explain to
Uncle Seri for me."
The chair tied to the sash cord stirred again. I lifted Ginny to a table and climbed up beside her.
HarlтАФagain somnambulisticallyтАФhanded me a chair. I twisted the sash cord about myself very carefully.
I made a good strong knotтАФmuch better than Ginny had untiedтАФand Ginny, trembling, let me pick her
up in my arms. I stood on the chair on the table and jerked at the sash cord.
Your father, Harl, Stan, LakiтАФshe seemed a very nice girlтАФthe rumpus-room, the dynamic mural
and the hartlegame batтАФall vanished in a luminous puce-colored mist. I still felt a tugging at my waist. But
for a moment Ginny and I were private in the brownish-purple mist that is characteristic ofтАФhmmmтАФlet
us say "nowhere." And in that moment I kissed Ginny and she kissed me back.
Then I walked out into the laboratory with Ginny in my arms and said thoughtfully to JoeтАФwhose
jaw dropped down to hereтАФ"Joe, this hurts me more than it does you."
And then I smashed Professor Hadley's time-transporter. I stamped on it, while Joe gazed stupidly at
Ginny. I had reason to smash the device. Naturally! If anybody else traveled in time, they might not be as
smart as I am, or their descendants might not be as dumb as you, Charles. Something might get messed
up. Somebody might marry the wrong person somewhere in the next fourteen centuries, and Ginny might
not get born. I wouldn't risk that!
So, Charles, I am happy to report that everything ended nicely, or will end nicely. For everybody but
you, and I must apologize for that. But surely you can understand that it is all for the best, can't you,
Charles? It would have been interesting to have gone beyond your rumpus-room in the thirty-fourth
century, and see what a city of your time was like, and I'd like to see the spaceships and the ground-cars
and the little personal fliers Ginny has been telling me about. But it doesn't matter.
You look at them, Charles. I'll look at Ginny.
You needn't worry about her, though. That gal has brains! She only halfway believed this story until I
fell on your head. But because she halfway believed, the morning she comes to your house with Harl and
Stan and Laki, she'll have made some tentative precautions. She brought along a whole bag full of
crystallized carbonтАФall the costume jewelry around the house with carbon crystals in it. Merely trinkets,
of course. You can buy them by the pound. Pretty beads. But back in the twentieth century they're called
diamonds and we don't know how to make them yet. She even picked up a paperbacked book on
electronics for beginners, aimed at ten-year-old kids. Some of it is over my head so far, but it's pretty
useful. With diamonds to start on and super-duper electronic principles to go on with, Ginny and I are in
no danger of starving, even in these primitive times.
We've got a primitive house with old-style hot-and-cold water and a quaint old electric furnace, and
we listen to our antique radio and watch primeval television, and we drive a car that burns that quaint old
stuff called gasoline in its cylinders ! But we manage. We don't mind hardships. We have each other.
I was just finishing this letter, Charles, when Ginny came in. Somehow I find it very satisfactory to be