"Larry Niven - The Return of William Proxmire UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

УWhy?Ф
The old man shook his head hard. УIТve just remembered that I donТt have to answer that question anymore. My point is that the government has spent far more taking rocks from the Moon and photographs from Saturn. Our economy would be far healthier if that money had been spent elsewhere.Ф
УIТd rather shoot Lyndon. Eliminate welfare. Save a lot more money that way.Ф
УA minute ago you were opposed to murder.Ф
The old man did have a way with words. УPoint taken. Could you get us funding? ItТd be a guaranteed Nobel Prize. I like the fact that you donТt need a scope-sighted rifle. A hypo full of sulfa drugs doesnТt have to be kept secret. What antibiotic?Ф
УI donТt know what cures consumption. I donТt know which year or what ship. IТve got people to look those things up, if I decide I want to know. I came straight here as soon as I read the morning paper. Why not? I run every day, any direction I like. But I havenТt heard you say itТs impossible, Andrew, and I havenТt heard you say you wonТt do it.Ф
УMore coffee?Ф
УYes, thank you.Ф
Proxmire left him alone while he was in the kitchen, and for that Andrew was grateful. HeТd have made no progress at all if heТd had to guard his expression. There was simply too much to think about.
He preferred not to consider the honors. Assume he had changed the past; how would he prove it before a board of his peers? УHow would I prove it now? What would I have to show them?Ф he muttered under his breath, while the coffee water was heating. УBooks? Books that didnТt get written? Newspapers? There are places thatТll print any newspaper headline I ask for. WAFFEN SS TO BUILD WORK CAMP IN DEATH VALLEY. I can mint Robert Kennedy half-dollars for a lot less than thirteen million bucks. Hmm . . .У But the Nobel Prize wasnТt the point.
Keeping Robert Heinlein alive a few years longer: Was that the point? It shouldnТt be. Heinlein wouldnТt have thought so.
Would the science fiction field really have collapsed without the Menace From Earth? Tradition within the science fiction field would have named Campbell, not Heinlein. But think: Was it magazines that had sucked Andrew Minsky into taking advanced physics classes? Or
Double Star, Red Planet, AndersonТs Tau Zero, VanceТs Tschai series? Then the newsstand magazines, then the subscriptions, then (of course) heТd dropped it all to pursue a career. If ProxmireТs staff investigated his past (as they must, if he was at all serious), they would find that Andrew Minsky, Ph.D., hadnТt read a science fiction magazine in fifteen years.
ProxmireТs voice came from the other room. УOf course, it would be a major chunk of funding. But wouldnТt my old friends be surprised to find me backing a scientific project! HowТs the coffee coming?Ф
УDone.Ф Andrew carried the pot in. УIТll do it,Ф he said. УThat is, I and my associates will build a time machine. WeТll need funding and weТll need active assistance using the Washburn accelerator. We should be ready for a man-rated experiment in three years, IТd think. We wonТt fail.Ф
He sat. He looked Proxmire in the eye. УLetТs keep thinking, though. A Navy officer walks the tilting deck of what would now be an antique Navy ship. An arm circles his throat. He grips the skinny wrist and elbow, bends the wrist downward, and throws the intruder into the sea. They train Navy men to fight, you know, and he was young and you are old.Ф
УI keep in shape,Ф Proxmire said coldly. УA medical man who performs autopsies once told me about men and women like me. We run two to five miles a day. We die in our eighties and nineties and hundreds. A fall kills us, or a car accident. Cut into us and you find veins and arteries you could run a toy train through.Ф
He was serious. УI was afraid you were thinking of taking along a blackjack or a trank gun or a KalashnikovЧФ

УIТll say it anyway. DonТt hurt him.Ф
Proxmire smiled. УThat would be missing the point.Ф
And if that part worked out, Andrew would take his chances with the rest.

He had been reaching for a beer while he thought about revising the time machine paper heТd done with Tipler and Penrose four years
ago. Somewhere heТd shifted over into daydreams, and that had sent him off on a weird track indeed.
It was like double vision in his head. The time machine (never built) had put William Proxmire (the ex-senator!) on the moving deck of the U.S.S. Roper on a gray midmorning in December 1933. Andrew never daydreamed this vividly. He slapped his flat belly, and wondered why, and remembered: He was ten pounds heavier in the daydream, because heТd been too busy to run.
So much detail! Maybe he was remembering a sweaty razor-sharp nightmare from last night, the kind in which you know youТre doing something bizarrely stupid, but you canТt figure out how to stop.
HeТd reached for a Henry WeinhartТs (Budweiser) from the refrigerator in his kitchen (in the office at Washburn, where the WeinhartТs always ran out first) while the project team watched their monitors (while the KCET funding drive whined in his living room). In his head there were double vision, double memories, double sensations. The world of quantum physics was blurred in spots. But this was his kitchen and he could hear KCET begging for money a room away.
Andrew walked into his living room and found William Proxmire dripping on his yellow rug.
No, wait. ThatТs the otherЧ The photogenic old man tossed the spray hypo on AndrewТs couch.
He stripped off his hooded raincoat, inverted it, and dropped it on top. He was trying to smile, but the fear showed through. УAndrew? What I am doing here?Ф
Andrew said, УMy head feels like two flavors of cotton. Give me a moment. IТm trying to remember two histories at once.Ф
УI should have had more time. And then it should have been the Washburn accelerator! You said!Ф
УYeah, well, I did and I didnТt. Welcome to the wonderful world of SchrodingerТs Cat. How did it go? You found a young lieutenant junior grade gunnery officer alone on deckФЧThe raincoat was soaking his cushionsЧФin the rainЧФ
УLosing his breakfast overside in the rain. Pulmonary tuberculosis, consumption. Good riddance to an ugly disease.Ф
УYou wrestled him to the deckЧФ
УHeh, heh, heh. No. I told him I was from the future. I showed him a spray hypo. HeТd never seen one. I was dressed as a civilian on a Navy ship. That got his attention. I told him if he was Robert Heinlein I had a cure for his cough.Ф
УCure for his cough?Ф
УI didnТt say it would kill him otherwise. I didnТt say it wouldnТt,
and he didnТt ask, but he may have assumed I wouldnТt have come for anything trivial. I knew his name. This was Heinlein, not some Wisconsin dairy farmer. He wanted to believe I was a time traveler. He did believe. I gave him his shot. Andrew, I feel cheated.Ф
УMe too. Get used to it.Ф But it was Andrew who was beginning to smile.
The older man hardly heard; his ears must be still ringing with that long-dead storm. УYou know, I would have liked to talk to him. I was supposed to have twenty-two minutes more. I gave him his shot and the whole scene popped like a soap bubble. Why did I come back here?Ф
УBecause we never got funding for research into time travel.Ф
УAh . . . hah. There have been changes. What changes?Ф
It wasnТt just remembering; it was a matter of selecting pairs of memories that were mutually exclusive, then judging between them. It was maddening . . . but it could be done. Andrew said, УThe Washburn accelerator goes with the time machine goes with the funding. My apartment goes with no time machine goes with no funding goes with . . . Bill, letТs go outside. It should be dark by now.Ф
Proxmire didnТt ask why. He looked badly worried.
The sun had set, but the sky wasnТt exactly black. In a line across a smaller, dimmer full Moon, four rectangles blazed like windows into the sun. Andrew sighed with relief. Collapse of the wave function:
This is reality.
William Proxmire said, УDonТt make me guess.Ф
УSolar-powered satellites. Looking Glass Three through Six.Ф