Clifford D. Simak Over the River & Other Stories.

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'What!' I yelled.
J.R. nodded. 'You and a photographer. Herb Harding. I called you in first. You leave tomorrow morning. Five hundred
years into the future for a starter. Get pictures. Come back and write your story. We'll spring it in the Sunday paper.
Whole front-page layout. What does the city look like five hundred years from now? What changes have been made?
Who's mayor? What are the women wearing in the fall of 2450?'
He grinned at me.
'And you might say, too, that the _Standard_ no longer is published. Whether it's the truth or not, you know. Old
Johnson will go hog wild when he reads that in your story.'
I could have refused, of course, but if I had, he would have sent somebody else and tied the can on me. Even in 1950,
despite a return to prosperity that beggared the flushest peak of 1929, good jobs in the newspaper field were not so
easy to pick up.
So I said I'd go, and half an hour later I found myself getting just a bit excited about being one of the first men to
travel into time. For I wouldn't be the very first. Doc Ackerman had traveled ahead a few years in his own machine,
often enough and far enough to prove the thing would work.
But the prospect of it gave me a headache when I tried to reason it out. The whole thing sounded wacky to me. Not
so much the idea that one could really travel in time, for I had no doubt one could. J.R. wasn't anybody's fool. Before
he sunk his money in that time machine he would have demanded ironclad, gilt-edged proof that it would operate
successfully.
But the thing that bothered me was the complications that might arise. The more I thought of it, the sicker and more
confused I got.
Why, with a time machine a reporter could travel ahead and report a man's death, get pictures of his funeral. Those
pictures could be taken back in time and published years before his death. That man, when he read the paper, would
know the exact hour that he would die, would see his own face framed within the casket.
A boy of ten might know that some day he would be elected president of the United States simply by reading the
_Globe_. The present president, angling for a third term, could read his own political fate if the _Globe_ chose to print
it.
A man might read that the next day he would meet death in a traffic accident. And if that man knew he was going to
die, he would take steps to guard against it. But could he guard against it? Could he change his own future? Or was
the future fast in a rigid mold? If the future said something was going to happen, was it absolutely necessary that it
must happen?
The more I thought about it, the crazier it sounded. But somehow I couldn't help but think of it. And the more I
thought about it, the worse my head hurt.
So I went down to the Dutchman's.
Louie was back of the bar, and when he handed me my first glass of beer, I said to him: 'It's a hell of a world, Louie.'
And Louie said tome: 'It sure as hell is, Mike.'
I drank a lot of beer, but I didn't get drunk. I stayed cold sober. And that made me sore, because I figured that by
rights I should take on a load. And all the time my head swam with questions and complicated puzzles.
I would have tried something stronger than beer, but I knew if I mixed drinks I'd get sick, so finally I gave up.
Louie asked me if there was something wrong, and I said no, there wasn't, but before I left I shook hands with Louie
and said good-by. If I had been drunk, Louie wouldn't have thought a thing of it, but I could see he was surprised I
acted that way when he knew I was sober as the daylight.
Just as I was going out the door I met Jimmy Langer coming in. Jimmy worked for the _Standard_ and was a good
newspaperman, but mean and full of low-down tricks. We were friends, of course, and had worked on lots of stories
together, but we always watched one another pretty close. There was never any telling what Jimmy might be up to.
'Hi, Jimmy,' I said.
And Jimmy did a funny thing. He didn't say a word. He just looked right at me and laughed into my face.
It took me so by surprise I didn't do anything until he was inside the Dutchman's, and then I walked down the street.
But at the corner I stopped, wondering if I hadn't better go back and punch Jimmy's nose. I hadn't liked the way he
laughed at me. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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