"Paul Levinson - Loose Ends (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

things he still might do...
The plane's lift-off ended his reverie. Jeff tried to
direct his thinking to what awaited him -- going back to 2084
through the Thorne, then into it again, through a new AWH, and
out again in 1985, the time he should have arrived in the first
place, to stop the explosion of the Challenger. He stared
steel-eyed out the window. No one could help JFK -- that should
had been obvious all along. You can't change history on that
major a level. But the Challenger -- that was more mechanical,
presumably an accident of technology, not of sick human
intention, more amenable to the time traveler's ministration.
That was what he kept telling himself, but it gave him
little comfort. Obviously, travelling back to 1985 wasn't as
easy as he and his team had thought -- if it was, why was he
here? There were things about time travel they didn't
understand.
He laughed bitterly. The last thing he wanted to be was a
"Fourth Magi" -- that additional wise man from the East who had
gotten a late start in his journey to give the infant Jesus a
gift. The potentate then spent the next thirty years in a vain
search for Jesus, always arriving in places a few hours after
Jesus had left. When he finally caught up it was too late --
Christ was already on the cross. Just as Jeff had been with
JFK. Would he be that way with the Challenger too? Arriving
just in time to see that horrendous explosion that took so much
else with it? Impotent witness wasn't the role Jeff had trained
for.
***
He landed at Idlewild in the early evening. The sadness in
the air was thicker than pollution. Soon it would harden into
the cynicism and outrage that disrupted the sixties and deformed
a good deal more of the times that came after.
It's not my fault, Jeff kept telling himself. My job was
to stop the Challenger tragedy -- I never really had a chance to
stop what happened in Dallas. I wasn't properly prepared. It
was crazy even to try.
He took a cab back to the Village, the same trip he had
taken 48 hours ago, in reverse. Everything was different. It
was Saturday night, and throngs of people were out, but the
sounds and colors were drained of vitality -- like someone had
pulled the plug on the watercolor, and all of its light had
leaked away.
His cab pulled up to the Student Building. Three
green-and-black police cars huddled like ugly roaches near the
entrance. Students were milling about, five or six officers
were conferring on the side, and the night air crackled with the
sound of police bulletins and the glare of pulsing lights.
"What's going on here, Officer?" Jeff demanded, more
sharply than he'd intended.
"Who the hell are you?"