"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Ideal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

work, composing a letter to Duns Scotus in distant CologneтАФone dayтАФ

"Time is!" said the image, and smiled benignly.

The Friar looked up. "Time is, indeed," he echoed. "Time it is that you give utterance, and to some
assertion less obvious than that time is. For of course time is, else there were nothing at all. Without
timeтАФ"

"Time was!" rumbled the image, still smiling, but sternly, at the statue of Draco.

"Indeed time was," said the monk, "Time was, is, and will be, for time is that medium in which events
occur. Matter exists in space, but eventsтАФ"

The image smiled no longer. "Time is past!" it roared in tones deep as the cathedral bell outside, and
burst into ten thousand pieces.

"There," said old Haskel van Manderpootz, shutting the book, "is my classical authority in this
experiment. This story, overlaid as it is with medieval myth and legend proves that Roger Bacon himself
attempted the experiment and failed." He shook a long finger at me. "Yet do not get the impression,
Dixon, that Friar Bacon was not a great man. He wasтАФextremely great, in fact; he lighted the torch that
his namesake Francis Bacon took up four centuries later, and that now van Manderpootz rekindles."

I stared in silence,

"Indeed," resumed the Professor, "Roger Bacon might almost be called a thirteenth-century van
Manderpootz, or van Manderpootz a twenty-first-century Roger Bacon. His Opus Majus, Opus Minor,
and Opus TertiumтАФ"

"What," I interrupted impatiently, "has all this to do withтАФthat?" I indicated the clumsy metal robot
standing in the corner of the laboratory.

"Don't interrupt!" snapped van Manderpootz.

At this point I fell out of my chair. The mass of metal had ejaculated something like "A-a-gh-rasp!" and
had lunged a single pace toward the window, arms upraised. "What the devil!" I sputtered as the thing
dropped its arms and returned stolidly to its place.

"A car must have passed in the alley," said van Manderpootz indifferently. "Now as I was saying, Roger
BaconтАФ"

I ceased to listen. When van Manderpootz is determined to finish a statement, interruptions are worse
than futile. As an ex-student of his, I know. So I permitted my thoughts to drift to certain personal
problems of my own, particularly Tips Alva, who was the most pressing problem of the moment. Yes, I
mean Tips Alva the 'vision dancer, the little blonde imp who entertains on the Yerba Mate hour for that
Brazilian company. Chorus girls, dancers, and television stars are a weakness of mine; maybe it indicates
that there's a latent artistic soul in me. Maybe.

I'm Dixon Wells, you know, scion of the N. J. Wells Corporation, Engineers Extraordinary. I'm
supposed to be an engineer myself; I say supposed, because in the seven years since my graduation, my
father hasn't given me much opportunity to prove it. He has a strong sense of the value of time, and I'm