"Asimov, Isaac - Brin, David - Foundations Triumph" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

This time, one snared his attention.

-I seem to have found correlations between your psych-history technique and the mathematical models used in forecasting patterns in the flow of spado-molecular currents in deep space! This, in turn, corresponds uncannily with the distribution of soil types on planets sampled across a wide range of galactic locales. I thought you might be interested in discussing this in person. If so, please indicate by-

Hari barked a laugh, making Kers Kantun glance over from the kitchen. This certainly was a cute one, all right! He scanned rows of mathematical symbols, finding the approach amateurish, if primly accurate and sincere. Not a kook, then. A well-meaning aficionado, compensating for poor talent with strangely original ideas. He ordered this letter sent to the juniormost member of the Fifty, instructing that it be answered with gentle courtesy-a knack that young Saha Lorwinth ought to learn, if she was going to be one of the secret rulers of human destiny.

With a sigh, he turned his wheelchair away from the wall monitor, toward his shielded private study. Pulling Daneel's gift from his robe, he laid it on the desk, in a slot specially made to read the ancient relic. The readout screen rippled with two-dimensional images and archaic letters that the computer translated for him.

A Child's Book of Knowledge

Britannica Publishing Company New Tokyo, Bayleyworld, 2757 C.E.

The info-store in front of him was highly illegal, but that would hardly stop Hari Seldon, who had once ordered the revival of those ancient simulated beings, Joan of Arc and Voltaire, from another half-melted archive. That act wound up plunging parts of Trantor into chaos when the pair of sims escaped their programmed bonds to run wild through the planet's data corridors. In fact, the whole episode ended rather well for Hari, though not for the citizens of Junin or Sark. Anyway, he felt little compunction over breaking the Archives Law once again.

Close to twenty thousand years ago. He pondered its publication date, just as awed as the first time he'd activated Daneel's gift. This may have been written for children of that age, but it holds more of our deep history than all of today's imperial scholars could pool together.

It had taken Hari half a year to peruse and get a feel for the sweep of early human existence, which began on distant Earth, on a continent called Africa, when a race of clever apes first stood upright and blinked with dull curiosity at the stars.

So many words emerged from that little stone cube. Some were already familiar, having come down to the present in murky form, through oral tales and traditions-

Rome

China

Shake Spear

Hamlet

Buddha

Apollo

The Spacer Worlds

Oddly enough, some fairy tales seemed to have survived virtually unchanged after two hundred centuries. Popular favorites like Pinocchio . . . and Frankenstein . . . were apparently far older than anyone imagined.

Other items in the archive Hari had first heard of just a few decades ago, when they were mentioned by the ancient sims, Voltaire and Joan.

France

Christianity Plato

But far greater was the list of things Hari never had an inkling of, until he first activated this little book. Facts about the human past that had only been known by Daneel Olivaw and other robots. People and places that once rang with vital import for all humanity.

Columbus

America

Einstein