"H. Beam Piper - Police Operation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

with the next. All time-lines are totally present, in perpetual co-existence. The theory is that the EPC
passes from one moment, on one time-line, to the next moment on the next line, so that the true passage
of the EPC from moment to moment is a two-dimensional diagonal. So, in the case we're using, the event
of your going into the Martian Palace exists on one time-line, and the event of your passing along to the
Starway exists on another, but both are events in real existence.

"Now, what we do, in paratime transposition, is to build up a hypertemporal field to include the time-line
we want to reach, and then shift over to it. Same point in the plenum; same point in primary timeтАФplus
primary time elapsed during mechanical and electronic lag in the relaysтАФbut a different line of secondary
time."

"Then why don't we have past-future time travel on our own time-line?" the pilot wanted to know.

That was a question every paratimer has to answer, every time he talks paratime to the laity. Verkan Vall
had been expecting it; he answered patiently.

"The Ghaldron-Hesthor field-generator is like every other mechanism; it can operate only in the area of
primary time in which it exists. It can transpose to any other time-line, and carry with it anything inside its
field, but it can't go outside its own temporal area of existence, any more than a bullet from that rifle can
hit the target a week before it's fired," Verkan Vall pointed out. "Anything inside the field is supposed to
be unaffected by anything outside. Supposed to be is the way to put it; it doesn't always work. Once in a
while, something pretty nasty gets picked up in transit." He thought, briefly, of the man in the black tunic.
"That's why we have armed guards at terminals."

"Suppose you pick up a blast from a nucleonic bomb," the pilot asked, "or something red-hot, or
radioactive?"

"We have a monument, at Paratime Police Headquarters, in Dhergabar, bearing the names of our own
personnel who didn't make it back. It's a large monument; over the past ten thousand years, it's been
inscribed with quite a few names."

"You can have it; I'll stick to rockets!" the pilot replied. "Tell[Pg 12] me another thing, though: What's all
this about levels, and sectors, and belts? What's the difference?"

"Purely arbitrary terms. There are five main probability levels, derived from the five possible outcomes of
the attempt to colonize this planet, seventy-five thousand years ago. We're on the First LevelтАФcomplete
success, and colony fully established. The Fifth Level is the probability of complete failureтАФno human
population established on this planet, and indigenous quasi-human life evolved indigenously. On the
Fourth Level, the colonists evidently met with some disaster and lost all memory of their extraterrestrial
origin, as well as all extraterrestrial culture. As far as they know, they are an indigenous race; they have a
long pre-history of stone-age savagery.

"Sectors are areas of paratime on any level in which the prevalent culture has a common origin and
common characteristics. They are divided more or less arbitrarily into sub-sectors. Belts are areas within
sub-sectors where conditions are the result of recent alternate probabilities. For instance, I've just come
from the Europo-American Sector of the Fourth Level, an area of about ten thousand parayears in depth,
in which the dominant civilization developed on the North-West Continent of the Major Land Mass, and
spread from there to the Minor Land Mass. The line on which I was operating is also part of a
sub-sector of about three thousand parayears' depth, and a belt developing from one of several probable
outcomes of a war concluded about three elapsed years ago. On that time-line, the field at the Hagraban