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

1981-issue ten-dollar bill with Donald T. Regan's signature, but
he had no other money, and had to take a chance that such a
minor anonymous anachronism wouldn't disturb the time-line.
Loops could be perfectly clean only in theory. The bill would
likely be dismissed as a clumsy counterfeit or a joke. Or who
knows, maybe it would be lost before it even got to a bank
teller.
He walked out onto Sixth Avenue and surveyed his options
yet one more time. The city was harsh, the air stank, he didn't
belong here. The sensible thing to do was return to 2084. And
yet...
He flagged down a passing cab. "Kennedy, uh ... Idlewild
Airport. On the double, Chief." As the cab pulled away, Jeff
recalled George Bernard Shaw's line that the reasonable man
adapts to his surroundings, the unreasonable man attempts to
change his surroundings to suit himself, and all progress
depends upon the unreasonable man.
There had to be something more to this than Dallas, but at
this point Dallas seemed the only way to get to it.
Inside the coffee shop, the waitress stuffed the bill in
her bosom pocket and laughed. "I tell ya," she said to the fat
man stuck behind the cash register like a melon, "these actor
types are all the same. They never remember to wait for their
change. I'm gonna keep this for good luck."
***
"Tunnel or Bridge?" the cabbie grunted through chewing gum.
Jeff wasn't completely sure what he was talking about. "Do
what you think best, Mac. Just get me to the airport as fast as
you can." He shifted his weight on the springy seat and looked
through the dirt-caked window ...
"Just got off the late shift, right? My brother-in-law
does the midnight-to-eight shift for Helmsley. You gotta do what
you gotta do to make a living these days, right? What's the
use of talking."
"Yeah, the inflation's impossible," Jeff agreed. Can't go
wrong in any century griping about inflation. And he made a
note to himself to get out of the janitor's outfit as soon as he
got to the airport.
"Yeah," the cabbie growled, "ain't it the truth."
Jeff felt in his pocket for his reassuring puterwafer but
got no comfort from it. He knew he was fully on his own now,
plans pertaining to 23 years in the future all but worthless.
In a worst-case scenario, if all he could catch was an early
morning flight, he'd have maybe an hour or two to get to the
Book Depository Building in Dealey Plaza after his plane arrived
in Dallas. If he could somehow get to the Building by 11, he'd
stake out the upper floors and try to intercept the gunman ...
or gunmen ... or gunwomen. He wondered whether he'd find Lee
Harvey Oswald up there by those windows. Historians would give
their right arms to know. A hundred-and-twenty years of