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

beaming.
 I blurted, "Are you all right?" Sorry. It was the first thing I thought of. I realized I could have said
something brilliant, such as "Mr. Watson, come here, I need you." I just hadn't thought about it in
advance, as Neil Armstrong so obviously had. Or as Ben Corrick had done:
"One small step for mankind," Ben Corrick said, "one giant step for science." Then, "Of course, I'm
all right. I only went to tomorrow. Look at this."
"Oh brother," I said, commenting on his first words, not on what he showed me, although it was
worth no fancier comment. I frowned at it. "A button?"
Corrick nodded vigorously. "A button. Look familiar?"
No, but he soon showed me that it appeared to match those on my jacket. That didn't seem to prove
anything, and I said so.
Ben blinked. "It proves that I went into the future," he said, dipping a hand into one stuffed pocket of
his ever-baggy pants, "and brought you back this button from your coat. It was lying right there on the
ground."
I checked. "BenтАФI think we ought to be dancing, screaming, getting drunk, whatever. Instead we're
standing here talking about a damn buttonтАФand there aren't any buttons missing from my jacket!"
"Of course there is, Harvey," Ben said, opening the knife he'd brought out of his pocket, and he cut
the lowest button off the front of my coat.
"Hey!"
Smiling, Ben dropped the button into the grass. "I'm putting it there," he said, "so it'll be there
tomorrow. And then I walk over from the temporal traverser, bend over like this, and pick it up." He
straightened up to show me the two buttons in his palm. They appeared to be identical.
"Be damned," I said. "But Ben . . . this . . . this isn't proof. I mean . . . you could have, you
knowтАФhell, you're a scientist. This isn't any sort of scientific proof."
"Do you mean to stand there andтАФ" He broke off. "You're right," he said slowly.
So he thought a moment, and then told me to take out my wallet and drop it on the ground, and I did,
and off he went again, while I stood there and did as I was told: I stared at my wallet, lying there in the
tall grass in the middle of someone's field of timothy. The wallet didn't move. Then Ben was back, and
walking over to me, and handing me my wallet.
It was mine, all right. And it was still lying down there at my feet, too.
"Condition's not as good," Ben said as I examined it, "since it spent the rest of the afternoon and
tonight here on the ground, and then got covered with dew tomorrow morning, which the sun baked off.
And kept on baking until I picked it up."
I went through my wallet. The new one. I mean the second one; wallet. I now had two of everything.
Very convenientтАФbut the currency with the identical serial numbers, I thought, could be pretty
dangerous. (Also a tempting way to "make" money. Put a wad of it down. Go to tomorrow and bring it
back. Again . . . and again ... and again! If there's a paradox there, I'm not going to worry about it. I can
see that it could be the money that folded itself, somewhere up the line.)
I dropped the wallet beside its look-alike and hugged Ben Corrick. We danced around a little, and
then I asked if he'd mind just going around again and picking up my wallet, earlier, before it got ruined.
Ben stared at me, then started laughing, and I realized how chickenshit ridiculous I was being, under the
circumstancesтАФthe circumstances being that he had just successfully traveled in timeтАФand we hugged
and whooped and did our jig again.
We had ourselves a genuine bona-fide certified card-carrying time machine!
Ben went around again, as requested. Handed me my wallet again. (The second one vanished, with a
minor bang.) I was still left with two, but he pointed out that I had to leave the original lying there. So it
would be there for him to pick up tomorrow. Because he just had. Twice.
"What if I don't?" I asked, feeling sly.
"Please, Harvey."
"Right," I said, in manner businesslike. "Now what about next week, or next year, Ben?"