"Bisson, Terry - First Fire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bisson Terry)

Published in SCIENCE FICTION AGE, September 1998.
FIRST FIRE
Terry Bisson
"An unusual request indeed. Why should I fly you to Iran?"
"Because you have money and I don't," Emil wanted to say, but didn't. "Because I
can help you authenticate your discovery at Ebtacan," he said.
"What discovery?"
"The Flame of Zoroaster."
The Tycoon nodded his head. His knee had been nodding all along. He was the
richest man in the world, and clearly one of the most impatient.
He wore Levis and a Gap T shirt under a linen sport coat. His legs were crossed
and his right foot was bobbing up and down as if he couldn't wait to get out of
the office.
Emil had gotten this appointment only by pulling every string and calling in
every marker. He knew he had less than thirty seconds to make his case.
"There is a legend that the fire at Ebtacan is the same one Darius worshipped,"
he said.
"I know the legend," said the Tycoon. The Ebtacan dig was one of the few of his
many projects that he followed closely. Most of them he ran through one
foundation or another, but his interest in archeology was genuine, and deep.
Emil knew that he had visited and even worked at the the dig several times.
"Archeology is not about legends," said the Tycoon. "It's about objects. Small,
hard objects you find in the dirt."
"What if I told you fire was a hard object," said Emil.
The Tycoon narrowed his world-famous eyes. They were boyish only in photos. "I'm
listening."
"I have developed a way to date fire. Not ashes, not charcoal, not the remnants
or evidences of fire, but the flame itself."
"I'm all ears."
"Using my device, which I call the spectrachronograph, I can date a flame to its
precise moment of ignition," said Emil. "With most fires that's only an hour or
two. In the case of, say, the Olympic flame, it may be decades. I won't bother
you with the technical details, but ..."
"Bother me with the technical details," said the Tycoon.
Emil explained how every flame has a unique spectragraphic signature, which is
altered over time at a steady rate, and lost altogether when the flame is
extinguished. "Every new flame has a new signature," he said. "With a
spectrachronographic analysis I can date a flame's age to within fractions of a
second per century."
"You've dated flames that old?"
"Not yet," said Emil. "Which is why I want to go to Ebtacan. Legends aside, the
Flame of Zoroaster is likely to be hundreds of years old. Dating it will put my
spectrachronograph on the map."
"And my dig as well," said the Tycoon.
Emil was startled to realize that he had scored. He went for the extra point.
"If we found a candle that had been burning since the French revolution, I could
tell you exactly when the match itself was struck, within two seconds. I
estimate my error factor at .8 seconds a century."
"I'll make it easy for you," the Tycoon said, opening his checkbook and writing
as he spoke. "Come back to my office in one week. On my secretary's desk you