"Michael Moorcock - Oswald Bastable 3 - The Steel Tsar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

time-travelers, only 'forward' movement through time (i.e. into their own future) is possible. 'Backward'
movement (a return to their present or past) or movement between the various alternative planes is impossible
for anyone save those few who make up the famous Guild of Temporal Adventurers. I knew that Bastable had
become a member of this Guild, but did not know how he had been recruited, unless it had been in the Valley
of the Dawn by Mrs. Persson herself.
'I have brought you something,' she said. She settled herself in her armchair and reached down for a black
2 Michael Moorcock


document case. 'They are not complete, but they are the best I can do. The rest you will have to fill in from
what I tell you and from your own perfectly good imagination.' It was a bundle of manuscript. I recognized the
hand at once. It was Bastable's.
'Good God!' I was astonished. 'He's turning into a novelist!'
'Not exactly. These are fresh memoirs that are all. He's read the others and is perfectly satisfied with what
you've done with them. He was extremely fond of your grandfather and says that he would be quite glad to
continue the tradition with you. Particularly, he says, since you've had rather better success in getting his stories
published!' She laughed.
The manuscript was a sizable one. I weighed it in my hand. 'So he was never able to find his own period
again? Or return to the life he so desperately wanted?'
'That's not for me to say. You'll notice from the manuscript that there's little explanation as to how he came
to the particular alternative time-stream he describes. Suffice to say he returned to Teku Benga, crossed into yet
another continuum and found his way to the airship-yards at Benares. This time he was reconciled to what had
happened and, being an experienced airshipman, claimed slight
Amnesia and a loss of papers. Eventually he got himself a mate's certificate, though it was impossible for him,
without impeccable credentials, to find a berth with any of the major lines.'
I smiled. 'And he's still haunted by angst, I suppose?'
'To a degree, He has many lives on his conscience. He knows only worlds at war. But we of the Guild
understand what a responsibility we carry and I think membership has helped him.'
'And I'll never meet him?'
'It's unlikely. This stream would probably reject him, turn him into that poor creature your grandfather
described, flung this way and that through Time, with no control whatsoever over his destiny.'
'He has that in common with most of us,' I remarked.
She was amused. 'I see you're still not completely over your self-pity, Moorcock.'
I smiled and apologized. 'I'm very excited by this.' I held up the manuscript. 'Bastable presumably wants it
published as soon as possible. Why?'
'Perhaps it's mere vanity. You know how people become once they see their names in print.'
'Poor?'
We both laughed at this.
'He trusts you, too,' she continued. 'He knows that you did not tamper with his work and also that he has
been of some use to you in your researches.'
'As have you, Mrs. Persson.'
'I'm glad. We enjoy what you do.'
'You find my speculations funny?' I said.
'That, too. We leave it to your rather strange imagination to produce the necessary obfuscations!'
I looked at the manuscript. I was surprised to notice a few peculiar correspondences and coincidences when
compared with my grandfather's first manuscript. Yet Bastable appeared not to make some of the connections
the reader might make. I remarked on it to Mrs. Persson.
'Our minds can hold only so much,' she said. 'As I've mentioned before, sometimes we do suffer from
genuine amnesia, or at least a kind of blocking out of much of our memory. It is one of the ways in which we
are sometimes able to enter time-streams not open to the general run of chrononauts.'