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

And the man himself, this Mr. Glescu, was about the same height as -Morniel and
me and he seemed to be not very much older. But there was a something about
himтАФI don 't know, call it quality, true and tremendous quality тАФthat would have
cowed the Duke of Wellington. Civi-lized, maybe that's the word: he was the most
civilized-looking man I'd ever seen.
He stepped forward. "We will now, " he said in a rich, wonderfully resonant voice,
"
indulge in the twentieth-century custom of shaking hands. "
So we indulged in the twentieth-century custom of shaking hands with him. First
Morniel, then meтАФand both very gingerly. Mr. Glescu shook hands with a peculiar
awkwardness that made me think of the way an Iowan farmer might eat with
chopsticks for the first time.
The ceremony over, he stood there and beamed at us. Or, rather, at Morniel.
"What a moment, eh?" he said. "What a supreme mo-ment! "
Morniel took a deep breath and I knew that all those years of meeting process
servers unexpectedly on the stairs had begun to pay off. He was recovering; his
mind was beginning to work again.
"
How do you mean `what a moment '?" he asked. "What's so special about it? Are
you theтАФthe inventor of time travel?"
Mr. Glescu twinkled with laughter. "Me? An inventor?
Oh, no. No, no! Time travel was invented by Antoinette Ingeborg inтАФbut that
was after your time. Hardly worth going into at the moment, especially since I only
have half an hour."
"
Why half an hour? " I asked, not so much because I was curious as because it
seemed like a good question.
"The skindrom can only be maintained that long," he elucidated. "The skindrom
isтАФwell, call it a transmitting device that enables me to appear in your period. There
is such an enormous expenditure of power required that a trip into the past is made
only once every fifty years. The privilege is awarded as a sort of Gobel. I hope I
have the word right. It is Gobel isn 't it? The award made in your time?"
I had a flash. "You wouldn 't mean Nobel, by any chance? The Nobel Prize? "
He nodded his head enthusiastically. "That's it! The Nobel Prize. The trip is
awarded to outstanding scholars as a kind of Nobel Prize. Once every fifty
yearsтАФthe man selected by the gardunax as the most pre-eminentтАФthat sort of
thing. Up to now, of course, it's always gone to historians and they 've frittered it
away on the Siege of Troy, the first atom-bomb explosion at Los Alamos, the
discovery of AmericaтАФthings like that. But this yearтАФ"
"Yes? " Morniel broke in, his voice quavering. We were both suddenly
remembering that Mr. Glescu had known his name. "What kind of scholar are you?"
Mr. Glescu made us a slight bow with his head, "I am an art scholar. My specialty
is art history. And my special field in art history is . . ."
"What?" Morniel demanded, his voice no longer qua-vering, but positively
screechy. "What is your special field?"
Again a slight bow from Mr. Glescu's head. "You, Mr. Mathaway. In my own
period, I may say without much fear of contradiction, I am the greatest living
authority on the life and works of Morniel Mathaway. My special field is you."
Morniel went white. He groped his way to the bed and sat down as if his hips
were made of glass. He opened his mouth several times and couldn't seem to get a