"H. Beam Piper - The Edge of the Knife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"You say Khalid ib'n Hussein's been assassinated?" he asked incredulously. "When did that happen?"
 There was no pastтАФno futureтАФonly a great chaotic NOW.

"In 1973, at Basra." There was a touch of impatience in his voice; surely they ought to know that much.
"He was shot, while leaving the Parliament Building, by an Egyptian Arab named Mohammed Noureed,
with an old U. S. Army M3 submachine-gun. Noureed killed two of Khalid's guards and wounded
another before he was overpowered. He was lynched on the spot by the crowd; stoned to death.
Ostensibly, he and his accomplices were religious fanatics; however, there can be no doubt whatever that
the murder was inspired, at least indirectly, by the Eastern Axis."

The class stirred like a grain-field in the wind. Some looked at him in blank amazement; some were
hastily averting faces red with poorly suppressed laughter. For a moment he was puzzled, and then
realization hit him like a blow in the stomach-pit. He'd forgotten, again.

"I didn't see anything in the papers about it," one boy was saying.
"The newscast, last evening, said Khalid was in Ankara, talking to the President of Turkey," another
offered.

"Professor Chalmers, would you tell us just what effect Khalid's death had upon the Islamic Caliphate
and the Middle Eastern situation in general?" a third voice asked with exaggerated solemnity. That was
Kendrick, the class humorist; the question was pure baiting.

"Well, Mr. Kendrick, I'm afraid it's a little too early to assess the full results of a thing like that, if they can
ever be fully assessed. For instance, who, in 1911, could have predicted all the consequences of the
pistol-shot at Sarajevo? Who, even today, can guess what the history of the world would have been had
Zangarra not missed Franklin Roosevelt in 1932? There's always that if."

He went on talking safe generalities as he glanced covertly at his watch. Only five minutes to the end of
the period; thank heaven he hadn't made that slip at the beginning of the class. "For instance, tomorrow,
when we take up the events in India from the First World War to the end of British rule, we will be
largely concerned with another victim of the assassin's bullet, Mohandas K. Gandhi. You may ask
yourselves, then, by how much that bullet altered the history of the Indian sub-continent. A word of
warning, however: The events we will be discussing will be either contemporary with or prior to what
was discussed today. I hope that you're all keeping your notes properly dated. It's always easy to
become confused in matters of chronology."

He wished, too late, that he hadn't said that. It pointed up the very thing he was trying to play down, and
raised a general laugh.

As soon as the room was empty, he hastened to his desk, snatched pencil and notepad. This had been a
bad one, the worst yet; he hadn't heard the end of it by any means. He couldn't waste thought on that
now, though. This was all new and important; it had welled up suddenly and without warning into his
conscious mind, and he must get it down in notes before the "memory"тАФeven mentally, he always put
that word into quotesтАФwas lost. He was still scribbling furiously when the instructor who would use the
room for the next period entered, followed by a few of his students. Chalmers finished, crammed the
notes into his pocket, and went out into the hall.

Most of his own Modern History IV class had left the building and were on their way across the campus
for science classes. A few, however, were joining groups for other classes here in Prescott Hall, and in