"Walter M. Miller - The Best of Walter M. Miller" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

"Mack says it won't be for years and years. "
Mack was the medical student. I resolved to call him tomorrow. But his mistake was innocent; he
didn't know what was the matter with Kenny.
"Mack doesn't know. He's just a kid himself. Nobody knowsтАФexcept that they'll find it sometime.
Nobody knows when. It might be next week."
"I wish I had a time-ship like Captain Chronos. "
"Why?"
He looked at me earnestly in the moonlight. "Because then I could go to some year when they knew
how to cure me."
"I wish it were possible. "
"I'll bet it is. I'll bet someday they can do that too. Maybe the government' s working on it now."
I told him I'd heard nothing of such a project.
"Then they ought to be. Think of the advantages. If you wanted to know something that nobody
knew, you could just go to some year when it had already been dis-covered. "
I told him that it wouldn't work, because then everybody would try it, and nobody would work on
new discoveries, and none would be made.
"Besides, Kenny, nobody can even prove time-travel is possible. "
"Scientists can do anything."
"Only things that are possible, Kenny. And only with money, and time, and workтАФand a reason."
Would it cost a lot to research for a time-ship, Dad?"
"


"Quite a lot, I imagine, if you could find somebody to do it."
"As much as the atom-bomb?"
"Maybe."
"I bet you could borrow it from banks . . . if somebody could prove it's possible."
"You'd need a lot of money of your own, kid, before the banks would help."
"I bet my stamp collection will be worth a lot of money someday. And my autograph book." The
conversation had wandered off into fantasy.
"In time, maybe in time. A century maybe. But banks won't wait that long."
He stared at me peculiarly. "But Dad, don't you see? What difference does time make, if you're
working on a time-machine?"
That one stopped me. "Try to have faith in the medi-cal labs, Kenny," was all I could find to say.

Kenny built a time-ship in the fork of a big maple. He made it from a packing crate, reinforced with
plywood, decorated with mysterious coils of copper wire. He filled it with battered clocks and junkyard
instruments. He mounted two seats in it, and dual controls. He made a fish-bowl canopy over a hole in
the top, and nailed a galvanized bucket on the nose. Broomstick guns protruded from its narrow weapon
ports. He painted it silvery gray, and decorated the bucket-nose with the insignia of Cap-tain Chronos
and the Guardsmen of Time. He nailed steps on the trunk of the maple; and when he wasn't in the house,
he could usually be found in the maple, pilot-ing the time-ship through imaginary centuries. He took a
picture of it with a box camera, and sent a print of it to Captain Chronos with a fan letter.
Then one day he fainted on the ladder, and fell out of the tree.
He wasn't badly hurt, only bruised, but it ended his career as a time-ship pilot. Kenny was losing color
and weight, and the lethargy was coming steadily over him. His fingertips were covered with tiny
stab-marks from the constant blood counts, and the hollow of his arm was marked with transfusion
needles. Mostly, he stayed inside.
We haunted the research institutes, and the daily mail was full of answers to our flood of pleading
inquiries-тАФall kinds of answers.