"Oswald Bastable - 03 - The Steel Tsar" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

Duke of Queens?'
She shook her head. 'Not this time.'
'Everything seems pointless,' I said.
She patted me on the arm. 'You should go away for a bit. Travel.'
'Perhaps.'
'And when you come back to London, I'll have the story waiting,' she
promised.
I was touched by her kindness and her wish to be of use and I thanked her. As
it happened a friend fell ill in
Los Angeles and I decided to visit him. I stayed far longer in the United States
than I had originally planned and
eventually, after a short stay in Paris, settled in England for a while in the
spring of 1980.
As Una Persson had predicted, I was, of course, ready to work. And, as she
had promised, she turned up one
evening, dressed in her usual slightly old-fashioned clothes of a military cut.
We enjoyed a drink and some general
talk and I heard gossip from the End of Time, a period that has always
fascinated me. Mrs. Persson is a seasoned
time-traveler and usually knows what and what not to tell, for incautious words
can have an enormous effect either
on the time-streams themselves or on that rarity, like herself, the chrononaut
who can travel through them more or
less at will.
She has always told me that so long as people regard my stories as fiction
and as long as they are fashioned to
be read as fiction then neither of us should be victims of the Morphail Effect,
which is Time's sometimes-radical
method of readjusting itself. The Morphail Effect is manifested most evidently
in the fact that, for most 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
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