"Jack Williamson - Three From the Legion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

He seemed apologetic, and oddly hesitant. тАЬYou see, Doctor, IтАЩve an unusualтАФwell,
call it a gift. IтАЩve meant, some-tune, to tell you about it. That is, if youтАЩd care to
hearтАФтАЭ
He paused, diffidently.
I had wondered a long time, about old John Delmar. A faded, stiff little man, with thin
gray hair and blue eyes that were curiously bright, strangely young. Still erect and
agile, for all the years he owned to, he walked with a slight quick limp from that old
bullet wound in his knee.
We had first met when he came home from the war in SpainтАФhe looked me up to
bring me word of a friend of mine, not a third his age, who had died beside him,
fighting with the Loyalists. I liked him. A lonely old soldier, he didnтАЩt talk too much
about his campaigns. We discovered a mutual interest in chess, and he made a
pleasant companion. He had a youth of heart, an eager and unquenchable vitality, rare
in a man so old. My medical interest, besides, was aroused by his durable physique.
For he had endured many things.
He had always been reticent. I was, I believe, his most intimate friend through those
last, unwontedly peaceful years, yet he had given me no more than the barest hints of
his long and remarkable life. He grew up, he told me, in the frontier West; he rode
with a gun in a cattle war when he was only a boy, and somehow he got into the
Texas Rangers a little short of the legal age. Later he served in the Rough Riders, and
in the Boer War, and under Porfirio Diaz. In 1914 he joined the British ArmyтАФto
make up, he said, for fighting the British in South Africa. Later he was in China and
in the Rif, in the Gran Chaco and hi Spain. It was a Spanish prison camp that stiffened
his bad knee. His hard-seasoned body began to fail him at last, and he finally came
home, too old to fight again. That was when we met.
I knew, too, that he was busy with some literary projectтАФdropping in at his rather
shabby rooms for a pipe and a game of chess, I had noticed his desk piled with closely
written pages. Until he came to the office that morning in the spring of 1945,
however, I had supposed that he was merely writing the memoirs of his colorful past.
I had no inkling that his manuscripts dealt with recollections of the more wonderful
future.
Fortunately, no patient was waiting that morning, and his quiet air of matter-of-fact
certainty about the moment of his death piqued my curiosity. When he was dressed
again, I made him fill his pipe and told him that IтАЩd be glad to hear.
тАЬItтАЩs a good thing that most fighting men are killed before they get too old to fight,тАЭ
he began a little awkwardly, settling back in his chair and easing his knee with thin,
quivering hands. тАЬThatтАЩs what I was thinking, one cold morning, the year this war
began.
тАЬYou remember when I came home to New YorkтАФor I called it coming home. But I
found myself a stranger. Most people donтАЩt have the time that you do, Doctor, for old
fighting men. There was nothing for me to do. I was useless as a worn-out gun. That
wet, gusty morningтАФit was April thirteenth, I rememberтАФI sat down on a bench in
Central Park, to think things over. I got cold. And I decidedтАФwell, that IтАЩd already
lived too long.
тАЬI was just getting up from the bench, to go back to the room and get my old
automatic, when IтАФremembered!
тАЬThatтАЩs the only word I know. Memory. It seems a little strange, though, to speak of
remembering things that havenтАЩt happened yet. That wonтАЩt happen, some of them, for
a thousand years and more. But thereтАЩs no other word.
тАЬIтАЩve talked to scientists about it, Doctor. A psychologist, first. A behaviorist. He