"Lem - Seventh Voyage" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lem Stanislaw)

on his head, like the other Friday me, the one I'd found in the
bathroom, but all at once I realized that this was the way it had to
be. That Friday me by now was the Saturday me, yes, and perhaps even
was knocking about somewhere in the vicinity of Sunday, while this
Friday me inside the spacesuit had only recently been the Thursday
me, into which same Thursday me I myself had been transformed at
midnight. Thus I was moving along the sloping curve of the time loop
towards that place in which the Friday me before the beating would
change into the Friday me already beaten. Still, he did say, back
then, that it had been the Sunday me who did it, and there was no
trace, as yet, of him. We stood alone in the cabin, he and I. Then
suddenly I had a brainstorm.
"Out of that spacesuit!" I growled.
"Keep off, Thursday!" he yelled.
"I'm not Thursday, I'm the SUNDAY ME!" I shrieked, closing in for
the kill. He tried to kick me, but spacesuit boots are very heavy
and before he could raise his leg, I let him have it over the head.
Not too hard, of course, since I had grown sufficiently familiar
with all of this to know that I in turn, when eventually I went from
the Thursday to the Friday me, would be on the receiving end, and I
wasn't particularly set on fracturing my own skull. The Friday me
fell with a groan, holding his head, and I brutally tore the
spacesuit off him. While he made for the bath room on wobbly legs,
muttering, "Where's the cotton...where's the seltzer," I quickly
began to don the suit that we had struggled over, until I
noticed--sticking out from under the bed--a human foot. I took a
closer look, kneeling. Under the bed lay a man; trying to muffle the
sound of his chewing, he was hurriedly bolting down the last bar of
the milk chocolate I had stored away in the suitcase for a rainy
sidereal day. The bastard was in such a hurry that he ate the
chocolate along with bits of tin foil, which glittered on his lips.
"Leave that chocolate alone!" I yelled, pulling at his foot. "Who
are you anyway? The Thursday me?..." I added in a lower voice,
seized by a sudden doubt, for the thought occurred that maybe I
already was the Friday me, and would soon have to collect what I had
dished out earlier to the same.
"The Sunday me," he mumbled, his mouth full. I felt weak. Now either
he was lying, in which case there was nothing to worry about, or
telling the truth, and if he was, I faced a clobbering for sure,
because the Sunday me--after all--was the one who had hit the Friday
me, the Friday me told me so himself before it happened, and then
later I, impersonating the Sunday me, had let him have it with the
pipe. But on the other hand, I said to myself, even if he's lying
and not the Sunday me, it's still quite possible that he's a later
me than me, and if he is a later me, he remembers everything that I
do, therefore already knows that I lied to the Friday me, and so
could deceive me in a similar manner, since what had been a spur
of-the-moment stratagem on my part was for him--by now--simply a
memory, a memory he could easily make use of. Meanwhile, as I
remained in uncertainty, he had eaten the rest of the chocolate and