Читать онлайн «New Year's Eve, 2000 AD»

New Year’s Eve—2000 A. D.

by Robert Silverberg

George Carhew glanced at his watch. The time was 11:21. He looked around at the rest of the guests at the party and said, “Hey! Thirty-nine more minutes and we enter the Twenty-First Century!”

Abel Marsh squinted sourly at Carhew. “How many times do I have to tell you, George, that the new century won’t begin for another year? 2001 is the first year of the Twenty-First Century, not 2000. You’ll have to wait till next year to celebrate that. ”

“Don’t be so damned picayune,” Carhew snapped. “In half an hour it’ll be the year 2000. Why shouldn’t it be a new century?”

“Because—”

“Oh, don’t fight over it, boys,” cooed Maritta Lewis, giggling happily. She was a tall brunette with wide eyes and full lips; she wore a clinging synthoplast off-the-bosom blouse and a sprayon skirt that molded her hips and long legs. “It’s whatever century you want it to be, tonight! Twentieth! Twenty-first! Don’t get an ulcer, dad. Live it up!”

She climbed out of the web-chair she had been decorating and crossed to the bar. “Come on, you two grouches. What kind of drinks can I get you?”

“Dial me a Four Planets,” Carhew said.

“Okay, spaceman. How about you, Abel?”

“Old-fashioned whiskey sour for me. None of these futuristic drinks. ” He grinned. “I still believe its the twentieth century, you see. ”

Maritta dialed the drinks and carried them back across the room to the two men, narrowly avoiding spilling them when a wildly dancing couple pranced past.

Carhew took his drink, observing the firm swell of the girl’s breasts before him. “Care to dance, Maritta?”

“Why, sure,” she said.

He sipped at the hopefully-named Four Planets, then put it on the low ebony table near him and stood. Maritta seemed to float into his arms.

Carhew drew her tightly to him, and the music billowed loudly around them. They danced silently for a while.

“You seem moody, George,” she said after a few moments. Something troubling you?”

“No,” he said, but from the tone of his voice it might as well have been Yes.

“You worry too much, you know? I’ve only known you for an evening, and I can see you’re a worrier. You and that man you came in with—that Abel. Both of you stiff and tense, and snapping at each other about nothing at all. Imagine, quarrelling over whether next year is the Twentieth or the Twenty-first Century!”

“Which reminds me—” Carhew glanced at his watch. “It’s 11:40. Twenty minutes to midnight. ”

“You’re changing the subject. Why don’t you come down to Dr. Bellison’s when the holiday is over. ”

Carhew stiffened suddenly. “Bellison! That quack? That mystic—!”

“You don’t understand,” she said softly. “You’re like all the rest. But you haven’t experienced Relativistic Release, that’s all. You ought to come down sometime. It’ll do you a world of good. ”

* * *

Feeling chilled, Carhew stared at the girl in his arms. Heldwig Bellison’s Relativistic Release philosophy was something new, something that had come spiralling out of Central Europe via jetcopter in 1998 and was busily infecting all of America now.