"Brin, David - Earth (UC)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

"Only that you claim to have a secret. Something
you've kept from reporters, tribunals . . . even the security
agencies of a dozen nations. In this day and age, that's impressive
by itself.
"But we Maori people of New Zealand have a saying,"
he went on. "A man who can fool chiefs, and even gods,
must still face the monsters he himself created.
6 DAVIDBRIN
"Have you created a monster, Dr. Lustig?"
The question direct. Alex realized why Button reminded
him of Pedro Manella on that humid evening in
Peru, as tear gas wafted down those debris-strewn streets and
canals. Both big men had voices like Hollywood deities.
Both were used to getting answers.
Manella had pursued Alex onto the creaking hotel balcony
to get a good view of the burning power plant. The
reporter panned his camera as the main containment building
collapsed amid clouds of powdery cement. Cheering students
provided a vivid scene for Manella to feed live to his
viewers on the Net.
"When the mob cut the power cables, Lustig, " the persistent
journalist asked while shooting, "that let your black
hole out of its magnetic cage. It fell into the Earth then,
no? So what happens now? Will it emerge again, blazing
and incinerating some hapless place halfway around the
world?
"What did you make here, Lustig? A beast that will
devour us all?"
Even then, Alex recognized the hidden message between
the words. The renowned investigator hadn't been
seeking truth; he wanted reassurance.
"No, of course I didn't," Alex remembered telling
Manella on that day, and everyone else since then. Now he
let go of the lie with relief.
"Yes, Mr. Button. I think I made the very Devil itself."
Stan Coldman's head jerked up. Until this moment,
Alex hadn't even confided in his old mentor. Sorry. Stan, he
thought.
Silence stretched as Button stared at him. "You're saying
... the singularity didn't dissipate like the experts
said? That it might still be down there, absorbing matter
from the Earth's core?"
Alex understood the man's incredulity. Human minds
weren't meant to picture something that was smaller than
an atom, and yet weighed megatons. Something narrow
enough to fall through the densest rock, yet bound to circle
the planet's center in a spiraling pavane of gravity. Something
ineffably but insatiably hungry, and which grew ever
hungrier the more it ate ...
(ust thinking about it put in sudden doubt the very