The Fourth Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Айн Рэнд

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СКАЧАТЬ of Hallix who would raise the devil if he were late to work. He breathed heavily in his indignation at the existence of people like Joe Hallix who would get him fired if he had half a chance. Presently he got out the newspaper.

      He read, quite unsuspicious. The newspaper, had he known it, was unique. It was quite the most remarkable newspaper on the whole world. It was the direct result of a milliammeter reading of twenty and a kilovolt reading of nineteen-point-six on the device down in the cellar of his landlady’s home.

      This newspaper said that “Undertaker Joe” had beaten “Goatface Jim” at the wrestling matches last night. It said that the Rangers had won, 6-3, in last night’s night game. It said that Carribee had romped home first in the fourth race, paying seven for two. Mr. Grebb was pained. He stuffed the paper in the crack of the seat beside him. He fell into bitter meditation on the undesirable characteristics of Joe Hallix.

      In time, he got off the bus, the bus-conductor gathered up the paper with other trash and heaved it into the trash box at the end of the line, and it was lost forever. Which was regrettable, because all other copies of the morning paper said that Goatface Jim had won over Undertaker Joe, that the Pilots beat the Rangers 5-3, and that Mooncalf won in the fourth race, paying three for two. The foreign news was different, too, the political news was subtly unlike, and the financial news was peculiar. But Mr. Grebb did not notice.

      That day he drove his truck, and got into three arguments with customers, two with Joe Hallix, and almost had a fight with a friend who insisted that Goatface Jim had won the wrestling match. Mr. Grebb was furious when his friend’s newspaper checked. It was apparently the same edition of the same paper he’d read, but it didn’t say the same things. He considered that it had betrayed him.

      Actually, the paper was the result of Professor Muntz’ apparatus for experiment in multiple time-tracks. But Mr. Grebb had never heard of Professor Muntz except as a lodger who’d dodged a truck and jumped in front of a bus. He certainly had never heard of multiple time-tracks and surely could not have imagined experiments in that field.

      But very many eminent scientists would have given much to read that newspaper, and the contrivance in the cellar could have been sold to any of half a dozen research institutions for tens of thousands of dollars. But Mr. Grebb didn’t even guess at such a thing, and he went to bed that night in a very gloomy mood.

      Next morning the alarm clock jerked him awake and he went downstairs filled with bitterness at the fate which made him get up and gave him Joe Hallix as a boss. His landlady dared not address him even after he was fed.

      He stamped dourly out the front door. There was the morning paper. He stooped to pick it up. As he bent over, there was the thump of a rolled-up paper landing. Then there were two papers on the porch. Mr. Grebb jumped, and turned scowling to glare at the paper-boy who apparently had almost hit him. But there was no paper-boy in sight. The paper seemed to have materialized out of empty air. Mr. Grebb growled anathemas at fool boys who hid, and went to his bus.

      * * * *

      Today’s paper did not deceive him. Today, his oracular comments on sporting events went unchallenged. But he had a furious argument with Joe Hallix. The delivery boss was riding him. Mr. Grebb fumed and muttered all day. When he got home, his landlady said uneasily:

      “Mr. Grebb, did you see the paper?”

      He growled inarticulately.

      “There’s a piece in it about Mr. Muntz,” said the landlady. “You know, the lodger who had your room and was hit by a bus? They call him Professor Muntz and say he lives here! But the policemen told me that he died in the hospital. I don’t know what to think!”

      Mr. Grebb remembered vaguely a newspaper which had told him lies. Yesterday’s paper. It had appeared out of thin air and it did not tell the truth. Today, the paper that appeared from nowhere had been left behind. But he had no theory. He merely growled:

      “Don’t believe them newspapers. They print a lot of hooey!”

      From his experience of the day before, the remark was justified. But he did not think of the machine in the cellar. Which was a pity, because Mr. Grebb and his landlady too would have been clasped to the bosom of anybody who understood The Mathematics of Multiple Time-Tracks and found out about that machine or the newspapers either.

      The theory of multiple time-tracks is, in effect, that since there are a great number of really possible futures, that there are a great number of possibly real presents. If a dozen futures are equally possible, they are equally real, and there is no reason to assume that all of them but one cease to have any validity merely because we experience that one as the present.

      The theory says that there is no evidence that the present moment of our experience is the only present moment that exists. That reality may be multiple, and that if you toss a coin for a decision, resolving that if it comes heads you will propose to Mabel and to Helen if it comes tails, there exist two futures in which each event can happen, and possibly after the tossing there exist two present moments in which each event does.

      And thus it followed that if Professor Muntz jumped out of the way of a truck, immediately before him there was one future in which he was hit by a bus, and another in which he was not. So that a person who understood Professor Muntz’ work, and knew about the machine down in the cellar, would immediately have concluded that the newspaper came from a time-track in which Professor Muntz’ attempt to dodge the truck had been wholly successful.

      But Mr. Grebb did not even speculate about such things. Instead, at supper he described at length and bitterly just what part of a horse’s anatomy most resembled Joe Hallix. He explained in great detail just how Joe Hallix had gotten all the delivery slips mixed up so that he, Mr. Grebb, had almost been charged with the loss of four kegs of beer. And afterward he went out to a tavern and had half a dozen beers and grew more embittered as he thought upon his wrongs.

      Next morning was cloudy when he went out the front door. There was one paper on the porch. There was a large wet space in the small front yard, and part of the porch was soaking wet. Mr. Grebb picked up the paper, dourly wondering who the devil had been using a hose when it looked like rain anyhow. Then there was a plopping sound, and a second paper appeared out of nowhere and smacked close by Mr. Grebb. He looked indignantly for the boy. He was invisible. There was no boy. The newspaper had come from nowhere.

      Mr. Grebb picked it up, too, and went belligerently out to the street to find the paper boy and tell him to stop playing tricks. Mr. Grebb’s brain was not analytical. When something happened which he did not understand, he assumed aggrievedly that somebody was acting smart. He rumbled wrathfully at his failure to find anybody, and went heavily off to the bus.

      On the bus he unfolded one newspaper. He glanced at the headlines and was bored. He shoved it down beside him and seethed over the remembrance of the four kegs of beer he had been accused of mislaying the previous day.

      Presently he unfolded the second paper, forgetting the first. The headlines were not the same. He blinked, remembered, and retrieved the first paper. The mastheads were identical. The date was identical. A minor story was identical. But where the headlines differed, they contradicted each other. One said that the local front-page criminal trial had ended in acquittal for the lady who murdered her husband with a boy-scout axe. The other said that she had been convicted and would appeal.

      * * * *

      It did not occur to Mr. Grebb that the jurymen might have been tossing coins, and that the two papers were the results, respectively, of a coin coming heads and the same coin coming tails. He regarded the two papers with enormous indignation. He checked the inner pages. СКАЧАТЬ