"Andrew J. Offutt - Gone With the Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Offutt Andrew J)

"You still reading all those hard-core science articles the way a kid reads funnybooks, Harvey?"
"Sure. What's the invention?"
"Well, see, he's had this grant, he and his department. But he's been at work on a private project for
years too, see. He calls it a, ah, temporal traverser."
"A temporal traverser," I echoed, dry as the landscape around Sinai.
"Right," Mark said, with escalating excitement in his voice. "D'you think it's possible, Harvey?"
"The word 'impossible'," I said, "won't be in Webster's Fourth. But how do I know, what's it
supposed toтАФa temporal traverser?"
"Right!"
"Mark? Time travel?"
"Right! Right!" I could practically see him and his belly jiggling up and down in his excitement.
"You sure he's not putting you on, Mark?"
"I don't think so, but that's what I want to find out, Harve boy. Can you get over to Chinchilla,
Pennsylvania and find out for me?"
"Can IтАФyou sending me a plane ticket, Mark? Chinchilla!"
"I'll cover it, Harvey. Just try to hold it down, OK? Times are hard."
I ignored that. Mark Ventnor is a hyper, not to mention a shucker. He is also publisher, president,
editor, and bigot-in-charge of Morpheus Books, which he founded. He's tried dozens of
timesтАФliterallyтАФto get a really Big Book out there, opportunistically, exploitatively jumping aboard
every topical express to come down the track. It's never happened. I know; I've written most of the
books for him. And so Mark sings the blues, constantlyтАФalthough the old phony does have money. Part
of the reason is he hangs onto it the way fans hoard old magazines and books. I know. I've done
fifty-seven books for Mark Ventnor in the past six years, with advances ranging from an
embarrassing-to-admit seven hundred and fifty dollars to a decent thirty-five hundred, using eleven pen
names. Subject matter has been very broad indeed: attempt after attempt at get-rich exploitation, each
about as effective as government economic plans.
Not one of those books has ever sold enough to earn me any royalties beyond the advance. Or so
Mark Ventnor says, anyhow, and he's the one with the ledgers. And his mainstay, a seemingly endless
stream of Gothics. They sell.
And now I knew we were off again.
But Mark was talking. "You know how academic-types are, Harve, Ben had a, ah, little accident.
They, ah ... he isn't with the university any more. And heтАФ"
"A little accident?"
"Ben'll tell you all about it, Harve. Dr. Corrick. Just get over there. I've got money at stake."
So then, while I lit another cigarette, Mark Ventnor dropped the rest of it on me.
There'd been a fair crowd on hand the day Dr. Ben Corrick was at last ready to demonstrate his
device. He explained, re-explained, blinked, and finally closed the switch. Nothing happened. He then
went across the big lab-sort-of room in which he'd constructed his . . . Thing. And he plugged it in.
Fortuitous, his being on the other side of that big room. The temporal traverser did absolutely nothing
for a moment or so. Then it removed, in a manner most noisy, the better part of the south and east walls
of ivied old Smoire Hall, not to mention a large assortment of glass items in the surrounding area.
The t.t. was not amid the rubble.
Shamed, castigated, attacked, called charlatan and worse, Ben Corrick, PhD, was forcibly
sabbaticalized.
Now, months later, he had called his old fraternity brother. The working model of his Mark Two t.t.
was nearly finished. But his bank account and savings were totally finished. All he needed to finish the
device was another ten thousand dollars. And everybody knows publishers have lots of money.
Ventnor didn't have to tell me that he then relieved himself of a sermon on money, inflation, hungry
writers and grasping, incompetent distributors, inflation, prices, union printers, inflation . . . and so on. I'd
heard it several times from Mark; it's improved signally since the advent of the recent unlamented