"William Tenn - The Human Angle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

looks like your mature work. But time is growing so shortтАФ "
Morniel snapped his fingers. "Tell you what. Anita has a couple of cats she asks
me to feed whenever she's away for a while, so she 's given me a key to her
apartment. Suppose I whip upstairs and get it?"
"Fine!" Mr. Glescu said happily, taking a quick look at his forefinger. "But please
hurry. "
"Will do. " And then, as Morniel turned to go up the stairs, he caught my eye. And
he gave me the signal, the one we use whenever we go "shopping." It meant: "Talk
to the man. Keep him interested."
I got it. The book. I'd seen Morniel in action far too many times not to remember
that casual gesture of tossing it on the bed as anything but a casual gesture. He'd just
put it where he could find it when he wanted itтАФfast. He was going upstairs to hide
it in some unlikely spot and when Mr. Glescu had to take off for his own timeтАФwell,
the book would just not be available.
Smooth? Very pretty damned smooth, I'd say. And Morniel Mathaway would
paint the paintings of Morniel Mathaway. Only he wouldn 't paint them.
He'd copy them.
Meanwhile, the signal snapped my mouth open and automatically started me
talking.
"
Do you paint yourself, Mr. Glescu? " I asked. I knew that would be a good gambit.
"Oh, no! Of course, I wanted to be an artist when I was a boyтАФI imagine every
critic starts out that wayтАФand I even committed a few daubs of my own. But they
were very bad, very bad indeed! I found it far easier to write about paintings than to
do them. Once I began reading the life of Morniel Mathaway, I knew I'd found my
field. Not only did I empathize closely with his paintings, but he seemed so much
like a person I could have known and liked. That's one of the things that puzzles me.
He's quite different from what I imagined."
I nodded. "I bet he is."
"Of course history has a way of adding stature and romance to any important
figure. And I can see several things about his personality that the glamorizing
process of the centuries couldтАФbut I shouldn't go on in this fash-ion, Mr. Dantziger.
You're his friend."
"About as much of a friend as he's got in the world," I told him, "which isn't
saying much."
And all the time I was trying to figure it out. But the more I figured, the more
confused I got. The paradoxes in the thing. How could Morniel Mathaway become
famous five hundred years from now by painting pictures that he first saw in a book
published five hundred years from now? Who painted the pictures? MornieI
Mathaway? The book said so, and with the book in his possession, he would
certainly do them. But he 'd be copying them out of the book. So who painted the
original pictures?
Mr. Glescu looked worriedly at his forefinger. "I'm run-ning out of
timeтАФpractically none left!"
He sped up the stairs, with me behind him. When we burst into the studio, I
braced myself for the argument over the book. I wasn't too happy about it, because
I liked Mr. Glescu.
The book wasn't there; the bed was empty. And two other things weren't
thereтАФthe time machine and Morniel Mathaway.
"He left in it!" Mr. Glescu gasped. "He stranded me here! He must have figured