"Callahan 02 - Time Travellers Strictly Cash 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

"There is nothing for you to feel guilt over, Reb," he insisted. "I'm fine. When. . . when love cannot possess, it is content to serve."
She started. "Who said that?"
Dimsdale blushed. "Me," he admitted. "About fifteen years ago." And frequently thereafter, he added to himself. "So put it out of your mind, all right?"
She smiled. "As long as you know how grateful I am for you. I could never have maintained Archer's empire without you."
"Nonsense. What are your plans-after, I mean?"
"When he's released? As few as possible. I thought perhaps he might enjoy a cruise around the world, sort of a reorientation. But I'm quite content to hole up in Luna or up in Alaska instead-or whatever he wants. As long as I'm with him, I..."
Dimsdalщ knew precilely how she felt. After this week it might be weeks or years before he saw her again.
The phone rang, and he answered it.. "Right. Let's go, Reb. They're ready."
The top of the cryotank had been removed now, allowing direct access to Archer Howell's defrosted body. At present it was only a body-no longer a corpse, not yet a man. It was "alive" in a certain technical sense, in that an array of machinery circulated its blood and pumped its lungs-but it was not yet Archer Howell. Dr. Bharadwaj awaited Rebecca Howell's command, as ordered, before firing the complex and precise charge through the pineal gland that he believed would restore independent life-function-and consciousness-to the preserved flesh.
"The new liver is in place and functioning correctly," he told her when she arrived. "Indications aze good. Shall I-"
"At once."
"Disconnect life support," he snapped, and this was done. As soon as the body's integrity had been restored, he pressed a button. The body bucked in its plexiglass cradle, then sank back limply. A technician shook her head, and Bharadwaj, sweating prodigiously, pressed the button a second time. The body spasmed again-and the eyes opened. The nostrils flared, and drew in breath; the chest expanded the fingers clenched spasmodically. Rebecca Howell cried out, Dimsdale stared with round eyes~, Bharadwaj and his support team broke Out in broad grins of relief and triumph. . .
And the first breath was expelled. In along, high, unmistakably infantile wail.

Rebecca Howell's mind was both tough and resilient. The moment her subconscious decided she was ready to handle consciousness again, it threw off heavy sedation like a flannel blanket. The, physician monitoring her telemetry in the next room started violently, wondering if be could have cat-napped without realizing it.
"What's wrong?" Dimsdale demanded.
"Nothing. Uh, she-a second ago she was deep under, and-"
"-now she's wide awake," Ditnsdald finished. "All right, stand by." He got up stiffly and went to her door., "Now comes the hard part," he said, too softly for the other to hear. Then he squared his shoulders and went in.
"Reb."
"It's all right, John. Truly-I'm okay. I'm terribly disappointed, of course,, but when you look at it in perspective this is really just a minor setback."
"No," he said very quietly. "It isn't."
"Of course it is. Look, it's perfectly obvious what's happened. Some kind of cryonic traurea wiped his mind. All his memories are gone, he'll have to start over again as an infant. But he's got a mature brain, John. He'll be an adult again in ten years, you wait and see if he isn't. I know him. Oh, he'll be different. He won't be the man I l knew; he'll have no memories In common with that man, and the new 'upbringing' is bound to alter his personality some. I'll have to learn how to make him love me all over again. But I've got my Archer back!"
Dirnsdale was struck dumb-as much by admiration for her indomitable spirit as by reluctance to tell her that she was dead wrong. He wished there were some honorable way he could die himself.
"What's ten years?" she chattered on, oblivious. "Hell, what's twenty years? We're both forty, now that I've caught up with him. With the medical we can afford, we're both good for a century and a quarter. At least sixty more years we can have together, that's four times as long as we've already had! I can be patient another decade or so for that." She smiled, then made herself become businesslike. "I want you to start making arrangements for his care at once. I want him to have the best rehabilitation this planet can provide, the ideal childhood. I don't know what kind of experts we have to hire, you'll have to-"
"No!" he cried.
She started, and looked at him closely. "John, what in God's name is wrong with-" She paled. "Oh my God, they lost him, didn't they?"-
"No," he managed to say. "No, Reb, they haven't lost him. They never had him."
"What the tuck are you talking about?" she blazed. "I heard him cry, saw him wave his arms and piss himself. He was alive."
"He still is. Was when I came in here, probably still is. But he is not Archer Howell."
"What are you saying?"
"Bharadwaj said a lot I didn't understand. Something about brain waves, something about radically different indices on the something-or-other profile, something about different reflexes and different-he was close to babbling. Archer was born after the development of brain-scan, so they have tapes on him from infancy. Eight experts and two computers agreee: Archer Howell's body is alive down the hall, but that's not him in it. Not even the infant Archer. Someone completely different." He shuddered. "A new person. A new, forty-year-old person."
The doctor outside was on his toes, feeding tranquilizers and sedatives into her system in a frantic attempt to keep his telemetry readings within acceptable limits. But her will was a hot sun, burning the fog off her mind as fast as it formed. "Impossible," she cried, and sprang from the bed before Dimsdale could react, ripping loose tubes and wires.
"You're wrong, all of you. That's my Archer!"
The doctor came in the door fast, trained and ready for anything, and she kicked him square in the stomach and leaped over him as he went down. She was out the door and into the hallway before Dimsdale could reach her.
When he reached the room assigned to Archer Howell, Dimsdale found her sitting beside the bed, crooning softly and rocking back and forth. An intern and a nurse were sprawled on the floor, the nurse bleeding slowly from the nose. Dimsdalc looked briefly at the diapсed man on the bed, and glanced away. He had once liked Archer Howell a great deal. "Reb-"
She glanced up and smiled. The smile sideswiped him.
"He knows me. I'm sure he does. He smiled at me." As she spoke, a flailing hand caught one of hers, quite by accident. "See?" It clutched, babylike, but with adult strength; she winced, but kept the smile.
Dimsdale swallowed. "Reb, it's not him. I swear it's not. BharIdwaj and Nakamura are absolutely-"
The smile was gone now. "Go away, John. Go far away, and don't ever come back. You're fired."
He opened his mouth, and then spun on his heel and left. A few steps down the hail he encountered Bharadwaj, alarmed and awesomely drunk. "She knows?"
"If you value your career, Doctor, leave her be. She knows-and she doesn't believe it."

Three years later she summoned him. Responding instantly cost him much, but he ignored it. He was at her Alaskan retreat within an hour of the summons, slowed only by her odd request that he come alone, in disguise, and without telling anyone. He was conveyed to her den, where he found her alone, seated at her desk. Insofar as it was possible for one of her wealth and power, she looked like hell.
"You've changed, Reb."
"I've changed my mind."
"That surpnses me more."
"He's the equivalent of a ten or twelve year old in a forty-three year old body. Even allowing for all that, he's not Archer."
"You believe in brain-scans now?"
"Not just them. I found people who knew him at that age. They helped me duplicate his upbringing as closely as possible." Dimsdale could not guess how much that had cost, even in money. "They agree with the scans. It's not Archer."
He kept silent.