The Seeds of Time
- Автор: Уиндем Джон Паркс Лукас Бейнон Харрис
- Язык: английский
- Год: Michael Joseph
- ISBN: 0-7181-0362-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The Seeds of Time». Краткое содержание книги:
It’s an epidemic. There’s something behind it. Something’s happening!’ he said, as near as one can vocalize italics. When I had read a few of them I had to admit that this time he had got hold of something where the vein of queerness was pretty constant.
A bus driver had seen the upper half of a body set up vertically in the road before him-but a bit too late. When he stopped and climbed out, sweating, to examine the mess, there was nothing there. A woman hanging out of a window, watching the street, saw another head below her doing the same, but this one was projecting out of the solid brickwork. Then there was a pair of arms that had risen out of the floor of a butcher’s shop and seemed to grope for something; after a minute or two they had withdrawn into the solid cement without trace-unless one were to count some detriment to the butcher’s trade. There was the man on a building job who had become aware of a strangely dressed figure standing close to him, but supported by empty air-after which he had to be helped down and sent home. Another figure was noticed between the rails in the path of a heavy goods train, but was found to have vanished without trace when the train had passed.
While I skimmed through these and some others, Jimmy stood waiting, like a soda syphon. I didn’t have to say more than,‘Huh!’
‘You see,’ he said. ‘Something is happening.’
‘Supposing it is,’ I conceded cautiously, ‘then what is it?’
The manifestation zone is limited,’ Jimmy told me impressively, and produced a town plan. ‘If you look where I’ve marked the incidents you’ll see that they’re grouped. Somewhere in that circle is “the focus of disturbance.” ‘ This time he managed to vocalize the inverted commas, and waited for me to register amazement.
‘So?’ I said. ‘Disturbance of just what?’
He dodged that one.
‘I’ve a pretty good idea now of the cause,’ he told me weightily.
That was normal, though it might be a different idea an hour later.
‘I’ll buy it,’ I offered.
‘Teleportation!’ he announced. That’s what it is. Bound to come sooner or later. Now someone’s on to it’
‘H’m,’ I said.
‘But it must be.’ He leaned forward earnestly. ‘How else’d you account for it?’
‘Well, if there could be teleportation, or teleportage, or whatever it is, surely there would have to be a transmitter and some sort of reassembly station,’ I pointed out. ‘You couldn’t expect a person or object to be kind of broadcast and then come together again any old place.’
‘But you don’t know that,’ he said. ‘Besides, that’s part of what I was meaning by ‘focus.’ The transmitter is somewhere else, but focussed on that area.’
‘If it is,’ I said, ‘he seems to have got his levels and positions all to hell. I wonder just what happens to a fellow who gets himself reassembled half in and half out of a brick wall?’
It’s details like that that get Jimmy impatient.
‘Obviously its early stages. Experimental,’ he said.
It still seemed to me uncomfortable for the subject, early stages or not, but I didn’t press it.
That evening was the first time I mentioned it to Sally, and, on the whole, it was a mistake. After making it quite clear that she didn’t believe it, she went on to say that if it was true it was probably just another invention.
‘What do you mean, “just another invention”? Why, it’d be revolutionary!’ I told her.
‘The wrong kind of revolution, the way we’d use it.’
‘Meaning?’ I asked.
Sally was in one of her withering moods. She turned on her disillusioned voice:
‘We’ve got two ways of using inventions,’ she said. ‘One is to kill more people more easily: the other is to enable quick-turnover spivs to make easy money out of suckers. Maybe there are a few exceptions like X-rays, but not many. Inventions! What we do with the product of genius is first of all ram it down to the lowest common denominator and then multiply it by the vulgarest possible fraction. What a century! What a world! When I think what other centuries are going to say about ours it makes me go hot all over.’
‘I shouldn’t worry. You won’t be hearing them,’ I said.
The withering eye was on me.
‘I should have known. That is a remark well up to the Twentieth Century standard.’
‘You’re a funny girl,’ I told her. ‘I mean, the way you think may be crazy, but you do do it, in your own way. Now most girl’s futures are all cloud-cuckoo beyond next season’s hat or next year’s baby. Outside of that it might be going to snow split atoms for all they care-they’ve got a comforting feeling deep down that nothing’s ever changed much, or ever will.’
‘A lot you know about what most girls think,’ said Sally.
‘That’s what I was meaning. How could I?’ I said.
She seemed to have set her mind so firmly against the whole business that I dropped it for the evening.
A couple of days later Jimmy looked into my room again.
‘He’s laid off,’ he said.
‘Who’s laid off what?’
‘This teleporting fellow. Not a report later than Tuesday. Maybe he knows somebody’s on to him.’
‘Meaning you?’ I asked.
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, are you?’
He frowned. ‘I’ve started. I took the bearings on the map of all the incidents, and the fix came on All Saints’ Church. I had a look all over the place, but I didn’t find anything. Still, I must be close-why else’d he stop?’
I couldn’t tell him that. Nor could anyone else. But that very evening there was a paragraph about an arm and a leg that some woman had watched travel along her kitchen wall.
I showed it to Sally.
‘I expect it will turn out to be some new kind of advertisement,’ she said.
‘A kind of secret advertising?’ I suggested. Then, seeing the withering look working up again: ‘How about going to a picture?’ I suggested.
It was overcast when we went in; when we came out it was raining hard. Seeing that there was less than a mile to her place, and all the taxis in the town were apparently busy, we decided to walk it. Sally pulled on the hood of her mackintosh, put her arm through mine, and we set out through the rain. For a bit we didn’t talk, then:
‘Darling,’ I said, ‘I know that I can be regarded as a frivolous person with low ethical standards, but has it ever occurred to you what a field there is there for reform?’
‘Yes,’ she said, decisively, but not in the right tone. ‘What I mean is,’ I told her patiently, ‘if you happened to be looking for a good work to devote your life to, what could be better than a reclamation job on such a character. The scope is tremendous, just ‘
‘Is this a proposal of some kind?’ Sally enquired.
‘Some kind! I’d have you know-Good God!’ I broke off.
We were in Tyler Street. A short street, rainswept now, and empty, except for ourselves. What stopped me was the sudden appearance of some kind of vehicle, further along. I couldn’t make it out very clearly on account of the rain, but I had the impression of a small, low-built lorry with several figures in light clothes on it driving across Tyler Street quite quickly, and vanishing. That wouldn’t have been so bad if there were any street crossing Tyler Street, but there isn’t; it had just come out of one side and gone into the other.
‘Did you see what I saw?’ I asked.
‘But how on earth ?’ she began.
We walked a little further until we came to the place where the thing had crossed, and looked at the solid brick wall on one side and the house fronts on the other.
‘You must have been mistaken,’ said Sally.
‘Well, for-I must have been mistaken!’
‘But it just couldn’t have happened, could it?’
‘Now, listen, darling ‘ I began.