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

will find a candle burning. I want you to tell me to within one second when the
flame was lit. Pacific Standard Time."
He tore out the check and laid it on the desk to indicate that the interview was
over.
Emil's heart was pounding as he picked up the check.
It was for a hundred dollars.
**
One week later Emil showed up at the Tycoon's office carrying what looked, to
the secretary, like a water pistol.
"This is the one," she said, pointing to the candle burning on her desk.
Emil pointed his device at the flame and pulled the trigger until he heard a
beep.
He released the trigger and read the display.
"Is this some kind of joke?" he said. "This flame was lighted less than three
minutes ago."
"Sort of a joke," said the Tycoon, coming out of his inner office with a burning
candle in his hand. With two fingers he pinched out the candle on the desk, then
relighted it from the candle in his hand.
Emil pointed the spectrachronograph at the flame and pulled the trigger again
until it beeped.
He read the display.
"I trust this is not another joke," he said. "This flame is almost forty years
old. 39.864, to be exact. I can translate into months ..."
"That's okay," said the Tycoon. He sat down on the desk beside the burning
candle, legs crossed, right foot bobbing. "That's very good. It was lighted from
the Eternal Flame on JFK's grave at Arlington. Did you know it's illegal to
carry an open flame on a commercial flight, even in first class? I had to send a
chartered jet to DC for your little test, but you passed it with flying colors."
Emil thought of the chartered jet; he thought of his hundred dollars.
The Tycoon was already writing out another check. "This is for expenses and
R&D," he said. "My secretary will send you a plane ticket. We will see you in
Ebtacan in ten days. But can I give you one piece of advice?"
The question was a courtesy only; the Tycoon didn't wait for an answer before
continuing: "Don't call it a spectrachronograph. Too sci-fi. Just call it a time
gun."
He stood up and handed Emil the check, then pinched out the flame again and left
the room.
The check was for $100,000.
**
Emil had never flown first class before. For the first time he wished the
Atlantic wider, the flight longer. The luxury ran out in Uzbekistan, however,
and the last two legs were made on terrifying Aeroflot propjets.
Ebtacan was a tiny crossroads in a vast desert, scratches on mauve sand. Emil
had expected magnificent ruins, and all he found were mud huts with corrugated
roofs, a petrol station that calculated by abacus, and a stalled Russian tank
covered with indecipherable graffiti.
"Alexander leveled it all," said the site manager, a portly Wisconsin professor
named Elliot, as they drove from the dirt airstrip to the tent city at the dig.
"The Macedonians razed the temples, raped the women, enslaved the men, butchered
the children." He recounted this with an alarming glee. "Then Alexander