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

a plane if we didn't. Well, let's call the time we know, the time your watch registers, Time-A. Now,
suppose the entire, infinite extent of Time-A is only an instant in another dimension of time, which we'll
call Time-B. The next instant of Time-B is also the entire extent of Time-A, and the next and the next. As
in Time-A, different things are happening at different instants. In one of these instants of Time-B, one of
the things that's happening is that King Henry the Seventh of England is furnishing ships to Christopher
Columbus."

The man with the odd clothes was getting excited again.

"ZeesтАФ'ow you sayтАФzees alternate probabeelitay; eet ees a theory zhenerally accept' een zees
countree?"

"Got it!" the sandy-haired man said, before anybody could answer. He set his drink on the stand-tray and
took a big jackknife out of his pocket, holding it unopened in his hand. "How's this sound?" he asked,
and hit the edge of the tray with the back of the knife, Bong!

"CrossroadsтАФofтАФDestiny!" he intoned, and hit the edge of the tray again, Bong! "This is the year
1959тАФbut not the 1959 of our world, for we are in a world of alternate probability, in another dimension
of time; a world parallel to and coexistent with but separate from our own, in which history has been
completely altered by a single momentous event." He shifted back to his normal voice.

"Not bad; only twenty-five seconds," the plump man said, looking up from his wrist watch. "And a
trained announcer could maybe shave five seconds off that. Yes, something like that, and at the end we'll
have another thirty seconds, and we can do without the guest."

"But zees alternate probibeelitay, in anozzer dimension," the stranger was insisting. "Ees zees a concept
original weet you?" he asked the colonel.

"Oh, no; that idea's been around for a long time."

"I never heard of it before now," the elderly man said, as though that completely demolished it.

"Zen eet ees zhenerally accept' by zee scienteest'?"

"Umm, no," the sandy-haired man relieved the colonel. "There's absolutely no evidence to support it, and
scientists don't accept unsupported assumptions unless they need them to explain something, and they
don't need this assumption for anything. Well, it would come in handy to make some of these reports of
freak phenomena, like mysterious appearances and disappearances, or flying-object sightings, or
reported falls of non-meteoric matter, theoretically respectable. Reports like that usually get the
ignore-and-forget treatment, now."

"Zen you believe zat zeese ozzer world of zee alternate probabeelitay, zey exist?"

"No. I don't disbelieve it, either. I've no reason to, one way or another." He studied his drink for a
moment, and lowered the level in the glass slightly. "I've said that once in a while things get reported that
look as though such other worlds, in another time-dimension, may exist. There have been whole books
published by people who collect stories like that. I must say that academic science isn't very hospitable to
them."

"You mean, zings sometimes, 'ow-you-say, leak in from one of zees ozzer worlds? Zat has been known