"H. Beam Piper - Crossroads of Destiny" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"What do you think, Professor?" the plump man was asking me.

"It would work out the other way. The differences wouldn't cancel out; they'd accumulate. Say something
happened a century ago, to throw a presidential election the other way. You'd get different people at the
head of the government, opposite lines of policy taken, and eventually we'd be getting into different wars
with different enemies at different times, and different batches of young men killed before they could
marry and have familiesтАФdifferent people being born or not being born. That would mean different ideas,
good or bad, being advanced; different books written; different inventions, and different social and
economic problems as a consequence."

"Look, he's only giving himself a century," the colonel added. "Think of the changes if this thing we were
discussing, Columbus sailing under the English flag, had happened. Or suppose Leif Ericson had been
able to plant a permanent colony in America in the Eleventh Century, or if the Saracens had won the
Battle of Tours. Try to imagine the world today if any of those things had happened. One thing you can
be sure ofтАФany errors you make in trying to imagine such a world will be on the side of
over-conservatism."

The sandy-haired man beside me, who had been using his highball for a crystal ball, must have glimpsed
in it what he was looking for. He finished the drink, set the empty glass on the stand-tray beside him, and
reached back to push the button.

"I don't think you realize just how good an idea you have, here," he told the plump man abruptly. "If you
did, you wouldn't ruin it with such timid and unimaginative treatment."

I thought he'd been staying out of the conversation because it was over his head. Instead, he had been
taking the plump man's idea apart, examining all the pieces, and considering what was wrong with it and
how it could be improved. The plump man looked startled, and then angryтАФtimid and unimaginative
were the last things he'd expected his idea to be called. Then he became uneasy. Maybe this fellow was a
typical representative of his lord and master, the faceless abstraction called the Public.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Misplaced emphasis. You shouldn't emphasize the event that could have changed history; you should
emphasize the changes that could have been made. You're going to end this show you were talking about
with a shot of Columbus wading up to the beach with an English flag, aren't you?"

"Well, that's the logical ending."

"That's the logical beginning," the sandy-haired man contradicted. "And after that, your guest historian
comes on; how much time will he be allowed?"

"Well, maybe three or four minutes. We can't cut the dramatization too shortтАФ"

"And he'll have to explain, a couple of times, and in words of one syllable, that what we have seen didn't
really happen, because if he doesn't, the next morning half the twelve-year-old kids in the country will be
rushing wild-eyed into school to slip the teacher the real inside about the discovery of America. By the
time he gets that done, he'll be able to mumble a couple of generalities about vast and incalculable effects,
and then it'll be time to tell the public about Widgets, the really safe cigarettes, all filter and absolutely free
from tobacco."