"Martin, Michael A - AtTheCavern" - читать интересную книгу автора (Martin Michael A)

spun about to face him. I couldn't stop shaking.

"I very nearly got killed by a not her one of you. Another one of me, I mean.
Where the hell were you just then?" I started to laugh at the absurdity of it.
Could I have counted on help from this Other in the fight? If I'd just now
gotten killed in the alley, wouldn't his mission suddenly have gotten a whole
lot less complicated?

"Did you kill him?" he asked soberly. I nodded.

My Other closed his eyes as though in silent prayer. Was he, too, imagining the
horror of having to kill one's self? "What a thing to have to do," he said at
length.

"I saved you the trouble," I said, maybe a little too harshly. I dug into a
jacket pocket and withdrew the palmtop computer I took from my dead Other's
body.

My living Other seemed to rouse himself all at once, putting aside his horror.
"We still have our original difficulty," he said. "I am here to protect and
preserve the timeline which produced John Winston Oho Lennon, the leader and
founder of the Beatles."

I touched a few keys on the palmtop, watching the screen as the machine booted
up. "And I am here," I said coolly, "on behalf of John Winston Gemsback Lennon,
one of the greatest New Wave science fiction writers who ever lived."

"It's one or the other," he said. "Simple."

Scrolling through a file on the palmtop, my spine recoiled as though charged
with freon. I wondered absurdly if someone were walking across my grave.

"No," I said. "It's not simple."

"What?"

"Who first invented the timefield generator?" I asked.

My Other shrugged. "Who knows? Once it was invented, it must have spread into
everywhere and everywhere. I'm sure there are some good theories, but I'm just a
perceptive A & R man who can push buttons with the best of 'cm. If you need that
kind of information, you'll need to consult a specialist from Paleo-Technical."

"And they wouldn't just tell us something like that. The inventor of the
timefield would be too venerable to time tamperers if just anybody could find
out his or her identity."

"Okay," he said.

"So you don't know how to build a timefield generator from scratch?" I asked my