"03.Time Streams" - читать интересную книгу автора (McGough Scott)

conversations, reducing conclusions to hypotheses,
surrendering step by step the whole march of time. Soon they
moved too quickly to seem anything but man-shaped blurs,
then were gone entirely. The lab was dark and empty for some
time, except the occasional jag of a mouse backing fitfully
across the floor.
Eventually the two scholars returned, drawing after them
a backwash of assistants and tutors. The galleries above
flooded with eager, watchful eyes. The past-time golem
trudged backward into the midst of it all. His return was
heralded by nodding heads and hands coming sharply away from
each other, drawing a brittle ovation from the air. The
artificers themselves formed a retreating pocket of space
into which the golem walked. He reached a designated spot
and settled into immense inertia. There was another time of
questions.
Malzra, with a suddenness that seemed almost savage,
reached toward the probe's neck, performed some quick
manipulation, and shoved the creature's head back on its
shoulders. In a moment more, he lifted the metal skull-piece
cleanly away.
Within the time machine, the silver man stared, stunned
to see his own being so quickly and easily dismantled. The
body yet stood, though the casing of the head lay now, as if
discarded, on a side table. The inner workings of the
golem's head were laid bare. Cogs and cables gleamed beneath
a low set of struts. Light leaked through the whole mass.
Malzra was busy tugging at a central silver case, the
movements of his fingers awakening twitches in the
creature's vivisected frame. Another two jiggles and Malzra
drew forth the case. He opened it. Inside lay a dark stone
the size of a child's fist. He removed the crystal. All
final signs of life fled the creature.
The silver man watched in amazed dread as Malzra held
high the stone. Gulping backward laughter came from the
gallery. Malzra shouted something that ended the jollity and
retreated to a table where he positioned the stone in a
metal case.
The students in the gallery began to move. Malzra and
Barrin busied themselves setting tools into cases and
rubbing smears of oil from rags onto their hands. As the
room slowly emptied, the dissected golem merely stood,
lifeless and headless in the midst of it all.
The regression slowed. The time-traveling silver man's
hulk smoldered-heat from temporal stress. He stepped from
the coruscating beam. Around him time resumed its forward
march. The students headed back into the gallery. The
scholars unpacked their tools and wiped their hands clean.
Out of phase and unnoticed by them all, the silver man
approached his headless predecessor. He stared into the