"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Worlds of If" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

Temporarily, that is. When the crash of the spring of '10 came and bounced me back on my father and
into the firm of N. J. Wells, her favor dropped a dozen points to the market's one. In February we were
engaged, in April we were hardly speaking. In May they sold me out. I'd been late again.

And now, there she was on the psychomat screen, obviously plumping out, and not nearly so pretty as
memory had pictured her. She was staring at me with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back.
The buzzes became voices.

"You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to go back to New York, where there's
a little life. I'm bored with you and your golf."

"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd."

"At least they're alive. You're a walking corpse! Just because you were lucky enough to gamble yourself
into the money, you think you're a tin god."

"Well, I don't think you're Cleopatra! Those friends of yoursтАФ they trail after you because you give
parties and spend moneyтАФmy money."
"Better than spending it to knock a white walnut along a mountainside!"

"Indeed? You ought to try it, Marie." (That was her real name.) "It might help your figureтАФthough I
doubt if anything could!"

She glared in rage andтАФwell, that was a painful half-hour. I won't give all the details, but I was glad
when the screen dissolved into meaningless colored clouds.

"Whew!" I said, staring at van Manderpootz, who had been reading.

"You liked it?"

"Liked it! Say, I guess I was lucky to be cleaned out. I won't regret it from now on."

"That," said the professor grandly, "is van Manderpootz's great contribution to human happiness. 'Of all
sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been!' True no longer, my friend Dick.
Van Manderpootz has shown that the proper reading is, 'It might have beenтАФworse!'"


It was very late when I returned home, and as a result, very late when I rose, and equally late when I got
to the office. My father was unnecessarily worked up about it, but he exaggerated when he said I'd never
been on time. He forgets the occasions when he's awakened me and dragged me down with him. Nor
was it necessary to refer so sarcastically to my missing the Baikal; I reminded him of the wrecking of the
liner, and he responded very heartlessly that if I'd been aboard, the rocket would have been late, and so
would have missed colliding with the British fruitship. It was likewise superfluous for him to mention that
when he and I had tried to snatch a few weeks of golfing in the mountains, even the spring had been late.
I had nothing to do with that.

"Dixon," he concluded, "you have no conception whatever of time. None whatever."

The conversation with van Manderpootz recurred to me. I was impelled to ask, "And have you, sir?"