"C. L. Moore - Greater Than Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

Bill looked up haggardly as Dunn's voice rolled out with the sternness of a
general addressing armies. "Pull yourself together, sir! You never had a
daughter! Don't you remember?"
Bill laughed wildly. "Remember? I've never had a son yet! I'm not married-not
even engaged! How can I remember what hasn't happened?"
"But you will marry Marta Mayhew! You did marry her! You founded the great
line of Corys and gave the world your-"
"Father . . . father! What's wrong?" Sue's sweet wail was in his ears. He
glanced toward her window momentarily, seeing the terror in the soft brown
eyes that stared at him, but he could only murmur:
"Hush, darling-wait, please!" before he faced the Leader and said with a
strong effort at calmness, "None of all that has happened- yet."
"But it will-it must-it did!"
"Even if I never married Marta, never had a son?"
Dunn's dark face convulsed with a grimace of exasperated anger.
"But good Lord, man, look here!" He seized Billy's blue-uniformed shoulders
with both hands, thrusting him forward. "You did have a son! This is his
descendant, the living likeness of young Gory Junior! This world . . . I
myself . . . all of us - . . we're the result of that marriage of yours! And
you never had a daughter! Are you trying to tell us we don't exist? Is this a.
. . a dream I'm showing you?" And he shook the boy's broad young shoulders
between his hands. "You're looking at us, hearing us, talking to us! Can't you
see that you must have married Math Mayhew?"
"Father, I want you! Come back!" Sue's wail was insistent.
Bill groaned. "Wait a minute, Dunn." And then, turning, "Yes, honey, what is
it?"


On her knees among the myrtle leaves Sue leaned forward among the sun-flecked
shadows of her cool green glade, crying: "Father, you won't. . . you can't
believe them? I heard.. . through your ears I heard them, and I can understand
a little through your mind linked with mine. I can understand what you're
thinking. . . but it can't be true! You're telling yourself that we're still
on the Probability Plane
- . . but that's just a theory! That's nothing but a speculation about the
future! How could I be anything but real? Why, it's silly! Look at me! Listen
to me! Here I am! Oh, don't let me go on thinking that maybe. . . maybe you're
right, after all. But it was Sallie Carlisle you married, wasn't it, father?
Please say it was!"
Bill gulped. "Wait, honey. Let me explain to them first." He knew he shouldn't
have started the whole incredible argument. You can't convince a living human
that he doesn't exist. They'd only think him mad. Well- Sue might understand.
Her training in metaphysics and telepathy might make it possible. But Billy-
He turned with a deep breath and a mental squaring of shoulders,
determined to try, anyhow. For he must be fair. He began: "Dunn, did you ever
hear of the Plane of Probability?"
At the man's incredulous stare he knew a dizzy moment of wonder whether he,
too, lived in an illusion as vivid as theirs, and in that instant the
foundations of time itself rocked beneath his feet. But he had no time now for
speculation. Young Billy must understand, no matter how mad Dunn believed him,