"Tom Purdom-The Redemption of August" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

something to do with the immense gravity fields that surround certain astronomical objects. One of the
younger astronomers at the observatory realized that time could be twisted in some fashion and began to
experiment with his ideas. He confided in a slightly older colleague who had become something of a
confidante, she told me about it, and two years later I found myself standing near a rural road in France,
with a coil rising behind me and a portable electronic device controlling the forces generated by the coil.
Even then the functionaries of the Prussian autocracy almost destroyed all my hopes. They didn't know
I was about to vanish into the past, of course. They were pursuing me because they had discovered I had
entered my native country on a forged passport. Fifteen minutes before I had planned to drive to the spot
I had selected for my departure, a GD and a blue-coated collaborator arrived at the house where I was
staying. The spray from a chemical self-defense device took care of the collaborator. A kick in the
appropriate target left the sausage-bottom writhing on the lawn. By the time I turned out of the driveway,
however, a helicopter -- a special kind of airplane -- was shadowing my truck as I raced down the road.
Thirty German troops charged toward me as I stood in front of the coil, my hands clutching the bars of a
bicycle, and waited for the forces I had unleashed to take effect.
***


There is no way anyone can tell you how it feels to be relocated in time. I had planned to arrive in June
of 1914, so I could spend a month in Paris during its last summer as a free city, but it was two weeks
before I could begin to truly savor the experience. There were whole days when I had to keep reminding
myself that the people on the streets were solid beings and I couldn't walk right through them. The first
few times I ate anything, I realized I didn't really believe the food could give my body any nourishment.
I had planned to ride to Paris by bicycle. I had even obtained a machine that had been built with the
frame angles and proportions that had been standard in the early part of the century. With the bicycle and
some bread and cheese. I could reach Paris without any currency. In Paris. I would sell the twelve small
diamonds I had with me and the money problem would be solved.
It was a good plan, but of course nothing ever works out exactly the way you planned. Only a German
staff officer could be foolish enough to believe he could foresee every eventuality. Five miles after I
started pedaling, the bicycle developed a puncture. I had done very little bicycling in my own time and I
discovered, after an hour of struggle, that I didn't know how to use my repair kit. My custom-made
machine ended up hidden behind a bush.
Fortunately, I had also decided to take an expensive harmonica with me, just in case I needed to raise
money before I reached Paris. Harmonicas hadn't changed much in ninety-five years -- even the brand
name was the same -- and I sold mine in the next small town and bought a railroad ticket.
My hasty departure had also meant that I had taken a few items that hadn't been included in my
original plans. I had been changing clothes when the German troops had arrived and I had been forced to
leave my 1914 trousers in my bag and merely slip into my 1914 jacket. My wallet had still been tucked
into the pocket of my twenty-first century trousers, so I arrived in my new environment with some plastic
cards that twenty-first century people used for banking purposes and an electronic calculating device -- a
kind of adding machine that was about the size and thickness of a calling card. I had also come through
time with my container of disorientation gas clipped to my shirt pocket.
So I lived in Paris, in luxury, in the last innocent June of its history as the capital of a free republic. I ate
in restaurants where Germans were regarded as foreigners. I sat in caf├йs and watched the comings and
goings of the first truly free French men and women I had ever seen. I made love to young women who
had never primped and wiggled in the hope that they might attract the touch of Teutonic paws. And on
the last day of June -- as the newspapers were still reporting the first reactions to Franz Ferdinand's
assassination -- I left for the Belgian border and my rendezvous with the mysterious "Greenway."
***
 Three days later, I saw the man who had brought me on this bizarre adventure riding away from the
center of town on his bicycle. I was returning to our mutual hotel after a visit to the railroad station and I