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

laughed. It didnтАЩt fit in, he said, with the concepts of behaviorism. A man, he said, is
just a machine. Everything a man does is just mechanical reaction to stimulus.
тАЬBut, if thatтАЩs so, there are stimuli that the behaviorists have never found.
тАЬThere was another man who didnтАЩt laugh. A physicist from Oxford, a lecturer on
EinsteinтАФrelativity. He didnтАЩt laugh. He seemed to believe what I told him. He asked
questions about myтАФ memories. But there wasnтАЩt much I could tell him, then.
тАЬWhat he told me helped to ease my mindтАФthe thing had had me worried. I wanted to
talk about it to you, Doctor. But we were just getting to be good chess companions,
and I didnтАЩt want you to think me too odd.
тАЬAnyhow, this Oxford man told me that Space and Time arenтАЩt real, apart. And they
arenтАЩt really different. They fade one into the other all around us. He spoke of the
continuum and two-way time and a theory of the serial universe. I didnтАЩt understand it
all. But thereтАЩs no real reason, he said, why we shouldnтАЩt remember the futureтАФall of
us. In theory, he said, our minds ought to be able to trace world-lines into the future,
just as easily as into the past.
тАЬHunches and premonitions and dreams, he believed, are sometimes real memories of
things yet to come. I didnтАЩt understand all he said, but he did convince me that the
thing wasnтАЩtтАФwell, insanity. I had been afraid, Doctor.
тАЬHe wanted to know more about what IтАФremembered. But that was years ago. It was
just scattered impressions, then, most of them vague and confused. ItтАЩs a power, I
think, that most people have to some degreeтАФit simply happens to be better
developed in me. IтАЩve always had hunches, some vague sense to warn me of dangerтАФ
which is probably why IтАЩm still alive. But the first clear memory of the future came
that day in the park. And it was many months before I could call them up at will.
тАЬYou donтАЩt understand it, I suppose. IтАЩll try to describe that first experience, in the
park. I slipped on the wet pavement, and fell back on the benchтАФI had got cold,
sitting there, and I wasnтАЩt so long back from Spain then, you know.
тАЬAnd suddenly I wasnтАЩt in the park at all.
тАЬI was still falling, all right. I was in the same positionтАФbut no longer on the Earth.
All around me was a weird plain. It was blazing with a glare of light, pitted with
thousands of craters, ringed with mountains higher than any I had ever seen. The Sun
was burning down out of a blue sky dark as midnight, and full of stars. There was
another body in the heavens, huge and greenish.
тАЬA fantastic black machine was gliding down over those terrible mountains. It was
larger than youтАЩd think a flying machine could be, and utterly strange. It had just hit
me with some weapon, and I was reeling back under the agony of the wound. Beside
me was a great explosion of red gas. The cloud of it poured over me, and burned my
lungs, and blotted out everything.
тАЬIt was some time before I realized that I had been on the Moon тАФor rather that I had
picked up the last thoughts of a man dying there. I had never had time for astronomy,
but one day I happened to see a photograph of the lunar cratersтАФand recognized
them, and knew that the greenish crescent had been the Earth itself.
тАЬAnd the shock of that discovery only increased my bewilderment. It was nearly a
year before I understood that I was developing an ability to recall the future. But that
first incident happened in the thirtieth century, in the conquest of the Moon by the
MedusaeтАФthe man whose last moments I shared was one of the human colonists they
murdered.
тАЬThe faculty improved with practise, like any other. ItтАЩs simply telepathy, IтАЩm
convinced, carrying thought across Time and not merely through Space. Just
remember that neither Space nor Time is real; they are both just aspects of one reality.