"Daniel Keys Moran - A Tale of the Continuing Time 01 - Emerald Eyes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

Someday I shall tell you of the life of Jorge Rodriguez; it is the least one can do for a man one has killed.

It is the truth that I killed Jorge Rodriguez.

Like all truths it is susceptible to interpretation. I had taken all the precautions available to me that my
visit to this time might not cause more damage than good; but it is never possible to know all of what may
come from any course of action. This is as true of a God of the Zaradin Church as it is of any other sentient.
Jorge Rodriguez entered the small room with two doors only moments after his fellow technicians had left
through the other. The doors were so designed that they could not both be open at the same time. I waited
patiently as the man came through the door leading to the laboratories proper. There was time for me,
despite the poor quality of ultraviolet light, to puzzle out his name badge, which was mounted on a piece of
dark plastic with a strip of a clear film upon it. He entered as the door had just barely opened, and then stood
in the doorway, preventing my passage, as the door slid shut again. It should not have been a problem; he
would continue through the next door, and I would open the door to the laboratories after he was gone. It
would appear to those inside as if the door had slid aside of its own accord; unusual, but given the relatively
primitive stage of their technology, it would not be so strange as to cause excitement in and of itself.
A glitch, they would call it.
But Jorge Rodriguez did not leave immediately As long minutes fled by on my personal time scale,
Rodriguez slumped back against the door to the laboratories With excruciating slowness he reached inside his
coat and withdrew a small cylinder, which he placed within his mouth. As far away as the small room would
allow me to get, I paced slowly back and forth to prevent my image from flickering into an instant of
appearance. It must have raised ever so faint a breeze
Rodriguez puffed on the cylinder, his back to the door through which I desperately needed to pass. It was
likely tobacco or marijuana, two preeminent inhalants of the period. I could not recall how long a typical
cylinder of either inhalant should have taken to be consumed, but it was soon apparent that whatever the
period was would be far longer than I had available.

I came down into Time.

It was instantaneous for me; for Rodriguez I appeared as a frozen statue for most of a second. His eyes
were opened wide in a surprise that would soon be terror, and he was drawing in air to shout. I reached past
the rising wave of fear, into his forebrain, and sent him into sleep as gently as I was able. His body began to
sag almost instantly; his breath exhaled in a loud sigh as he fell. I caught him before he had struck the
ground, and carried him out through the door into the corridor. In Time I erased his memories of me, and in
Time I returned to the small room where I had killed Jorge Rodriguez. I touched the pressure pad that
opened the door into the laboratories, and as it opened I ascended into fast time once more.
The small badge that Jorge Rodriguez wore had turned from clear to black while he stood in that room
with me. I had lived a thousand times as fast as he; the heat of my body had struck him as gamma rays for
more than long enough.


"A remarkably impersonal room, this." Amnier stood in front of her bookcase, ran one finger down the
spine of a text by de Nostri on fine neural structure. "No paintings, no holos . . ." Without subtlety, he watched
her as he spoke. She held herself like a man, shoulders squared back.
Montignet moved by him, to seat herself behind her desk. She pressed her thumb against the lock and
slid open the filing drawer "I'm rarely here I generally work downstairs at the lab. I have a desk there, and
there are cots for when we draw night duty." From the filing drawer she withdrew two folders, and closed the
drawer again. The drawer locked itself automatically "The books are mostly gifts." Amnier turned back to her