Книга только для ознакомления
. "A
double dozen
centuries-" Jane Libby had said.
How could this easygoing young lady. Dr. Deety, be so
emotional about long-dead German pundits? I know of only one event two
thousand years or more in the past that people get emotional about... and that
one never happened.
I had begun to make a list in my mind of things that did not add up-the
claimed age of Lazarus-that long list of deadly diseases I was alleged to have
suffered from-half a dozen weird events in Luna- Most especially Tertius itself.
Was this indeed a strange planet far distant from Earth in both space and time?
Or was it a Potemkin village on a South Pacific island? Or even Southern
California? I had not seen the city called Boondock (one million people, more or
less, so they said); I had seen maybe fifty people all told. Did the others
exist only as memorized background for dialog extemporized to fit Potemkin
roles?
(Watch it, Richard! You're getting paranoid again.) How much Lethe does it
take to addle the brain?
"Deety, you seem to feel strongly about Dr. Einstein."
"I have reason to!"
"But he lived so long ago. 'A double dozen centuries' Jane Libby put it."
"That long ago to her. Not to me!"
Dr. Burroughs spoke up. "Colonel Campbell, I think you may be assuming that
we are native Tertians. We are not. We are refugees from the twentieth century,
just as you are
|
