"Spider Robinson - C2 - Timetravellers Strictly Cash" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

She took a sip of her coffee and sat up a little straighter.
Her eyes were the color of sun-cured Hawaiian buds. "They shut the paper dOwn for a week.
The next day, when I woke up, I got out my employee directory and looked this guy up.
While Bobby was in school,I went over to his house. It took me hours to break him down,
but I wouldn't take no answer
for an answer. Finally he gave up. 'I've got fivesight,' he told me. 'Something just a little bit
better than foresight. 'It was the only joke I ever heard him make, then or since."
I made the gasping sound again. "Precognition," Doc Webster breathed. Awkwardly, from my
tailor's seat, I worked my keys out of my pocket and tossed them to Callahan. He caught them in
the coffee can he had ready and started a shot of Bushmill's on its way to me without a word.


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"You know the expression 'Bad news travels fast'?" she asked. "For him it travels so fast
it gets there before the
event. About three hours before, more or less. But only bad news. Disasters, accidents, traumas
large and small are all he ever sees."
"That sounds ideal," Doc Webster said thoughtfully. "He doesn't have to lose the fun
ofpleasant surprises, but he
doesn't have to worry about unpleasant ones. That sounds like the best way to . . . " He shifted
his immense bulk in his chair. "Damn it, what is the verb for precognition? Precognite?"
"Ain't they the guys that sang that 'Jeremiah was a bullfrog' song?" Long-Drink murmured
to Tommy, who kicked him hard in the shins.
"That shows how much you know about it," she told the Doc. "He has three hours to worry
about each unpleasant surprise-and there's a strictly limited amount he can do about it."
The Doc opened his mouth and then shut it tight and let her tell it. A good doctor hates
forming opinions in ignorance.
"The first thing I asked him when he told me was why hadn't he warned Phil and Mabel and
the others. And then I
caught myself and said, 'What a dumb question! How're you going to keep six people away from their
desks without
telling them why? Forget I asked that.'"
"'It's worse than that,' he told me. 'It's not that I'm trying to preserve some kind of
secret identity-it's that it wouldn't do the slightest bit of good anyway, I can ameliorate to
some extent. But I cannot prevent. No matter what. I'm not. . . not permitted.'
"'Permitted by who?' I asked.
'By whoever or whatever sends me these damned premonitions in the first place,' he said.
'I haven't the faintest
idea who~
" 'What exactly are the limitations?'
'If a pot of water is going to boil over and scald me, I can't just not make tea that
night. Sooner or later I will make tea and scald myself. The longer I put off the inevitable, the
worse 1 get burned. But if I accept it and let it happen in its natural time, I'm allowed to, say,
have a pot of ice water handy to stick my hand in. When I saw that my neighbor's steering box was
going to fail, I couldn't keep him from driving that day, but I could remind him to wear his
seatbelt, and so his injuries were minimized. But if I'd seen him dying in that wreck,I couldn't
have done anything-except arrange to be near the wife when she got the news. It's. . . it's