"Broderick, Damien - The Dreaming (The Dreaming Dragons)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Broderick Damien)

He stepped onto the shaggy lawn and bent vigorously back and forth, touching his sandalled toes, giving vent to hearty, full-bodied snorts. The brisk exercise cheered him immensely, as always. He almost found it in him to regard General Sutton's visitation with some avidity.
'Fuck the Pentagon,' he muttered, with a ritual sign, 'and all who sail in her.'
From delFord's breast pocket his personal phone farted, juicy and antiphonal. He sniggered merrily, and started back through the damp grass to the large A-frame perched on the bluff. A sly gift from Benedict, his fifteen year old, the phone's slim case was an auditory jack-in-the-box, a maze of solid-state vulgarity and _joie de vivre_ programmed to appall pompous dignitaries. It had exposed itself for the first time in the middle of an exquisite chamber recital in Durham, although he had it switched to mute: a Daughter of the American Republic dowager had bridled most satisfactorily at the brief squeal of a cow elephant in heat and drawn away aghast when Bill, stiffening in his seat, had collapsed again with coarse guffaws. He'd chided the impudent youth, of course, but kept and cherished the software hack.
The day brightened, and rays of splintered light gleamed beautifully from droplets trapped in a fern-spanning spider web. A large official automobile was parked in front of the glass and copper entrance, with a small official driver dozing peacefully behind the wheel. Bill delFord knew the species: the merest glimpse of military man would bring the driver's shoulders up, firm his features to instant alertness. How wonderful, thought Bill, to be so contained within the matrix of known and predictable necessities. How pitiful.
A spot of golden light caught his eye. Morning sun smeared the bronze plaque above the main doors. Commonplace after so many years, the etched words failed to hold his attention; again, the chiding inward critic noted the dulling of his attention, its mere utilitarian focus. He stopped himself, took several paces backwards and looked up at the plaque. We're somnambulists, he thought.
The quotation was from Laura Archera Huxley, the visionary eclectic's widow: _It is easy for someone without scientific knowledge to accept an unorthodox approach. But for the people learned in any field it is very difficult to accept a conclusion totally different from that which they have formulated through years of work and study_.
Indeed. And thus had Aldous earned his peers' contempt, and the adulation of buffoons. And yet, delFord realised, he felt refreshed by the implied admonition. He wondered if General Sutton had paused here, minutes ago, to read the plaque; he imagined the slight tightening of nose and mouth. They need us, he thought, but they don't have to enjoy it.
Whistling, he stepped into the foyer. Erica indicated the reception annex with her chin, and grimaced. Bill grinned back without a word.
A pair of philosophical opposites framed the annexe door. To the right hung his lovely Rothko, limpid and transparent, films of light blurred at their boundaries. Instinctively, the eye penetrated its planes to infinity, invited to a levitation of spirit. On the left was a statement by Mark Boyle: planar, gritty, a surface of old pitted brickwork from the putrid Liverpool docks where Bill had spent his childhood. Like the fabulously-expensive Rothko, a rich New Age dotcom donor's gift. The painting was in two planes simultaneously, the vertical wall of dark, purplish bricks, the horizontal of some pre-asphalt alleyway; in either orientation, a definitive, workaday squalor. The paintings, comparable in size, strained against each other, until the heart led the brain into their complementarity.
Janine met him with an earthenware mug of steaming dark-roast. It burnt his fingers; he extended his right hand to the general. 'Good morning, gentlemen. You're looking exceptionally fit, Dwayne. How's Barbara and the girls?'
'Fine, fine, Bill. Another grandson last month. And Selma?'
'Dwayne, you should give up all this military nonsense and get down here to the Coast. Selma's health has improved out of sight since we made the move.' He sipped at his mug. 'I gather you have some startling whizbang thingee you want us to road-test for you.'
The general's eyes flickered to Janine. 'Bill, I don't believe you've met these two fellows before.' One was a dour, sandyhaired man in dark suit and tie. 'Lennox Carrington, from Caltech. Lenny's been working long-distance with Ed Witten at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton on M-theory's technological implications.' The other was young, an Air Force captain, a burly, eager type who surely possessed more brains than immediate impressions would credit. 'Dr delFord, Captain Hugh Lapp. Hugh has done astronaut training for the Shuttle program, and spent five months with Lilly's team studying cognitive distortion in the isolation tank.'
DelFord ushered them to leather seats. 'Of course,' he said. 'I recall your name on a couple of the final reports. You must be older than you look, Hugh. Maybe the military life does have some virtues after all. And call me Bill, we work on first name basis here. Janine, nip out and make sure the kids are ready. Buzz me.'
She departed, closing the door quietly behind her. Harrington visibly relaxed, though the muscles in his shoulders remained hunched and tight. What he needs to make him a human being, Bill thought, is about fifty hours of Rolfing. The implication was nervous-making. How could broken gauge theory make a man so uptight? The man's muscular rigidity certainly had a more specific cause than general cerebrotonic blocking.
'As you've gathered,' Sutton told him, 'we have a direct interest in your work on out-of-body-experience. I'm afraid I can't give you all the background, but Lennox and a large number of colleagues have spent the last few months examining a curious effect with a bearing on your own experiments.' He leaned forward and knotted his hands. 'I'm having some equipment set up for you right now. Hugh will be seconded to your staff. Run this thing down for us, Bill. It is a matter of imperative national security.'
DelFord regarded him with amusement. 'I assume you're not out of your mind, Dwayne, but let me remind you of the security status of my merry little team. Alister Jerison -- '
' -- is a member in good standing of the Trotskyite alliance, Science for People's Liberation. Dr Alice Langer is a spokeswoman for Sappho. And the rest of you are a bunch of left-liberal freak-fringe intellectual bandits. I know.' Sutton was angry, but contained the emotion well behind his bland sun-lamped face; he _didn't_ enjoy it. 'Just take my word, Bill. The normal criteria have been waived. J. Edgar is reeling in his plutonium coffin.'
'Shit,' said delFord. 'So they've finally found something bigger than the "national interest". I take it the Russians are involved?'
'What we're dealing with here,' the physicist said, 'makes the International Space Station look like a picnic.'
Briefly, Bill's stomach spasmed. You don't worry about OOBEs, he told himself, if the world's coming to an end after all. A muted buzzer sounded. DelFord stood up, and placed his empty mug neatly next to the bubbling percolator.
'Okay, guys,' he told them. 'Let's meet the gang. But let me caution you -- your security reports might have us labelled as bandits, but you'd better _believe_ it. We've devised our own methods, and they're not what you'll be accustomed to from the Pentagon.' He held the door open as Harrington followed the general out. 'Or the Caltech common room, either.'
For a moment the astronaut trailed behind, studying a free-standing basalt, an Aztec rendering of Ehacatl, Quetzalcoatl under his guise as wind deity.
'You have a startling decor, Bill.' He gestured at the muted mural of entwined Islamic geometric forms, the skinny bank of secretarial microprocessors and the fleshy indoor plants.
'Yeah.' Bill delFord walked beside Lapp as they went down the corridor to the Grope Pit. 'The whole spread came to us by default, and we've tinkered with it. You can blame the OPEC upheaval. There was this sheikling, Hosein el-Bagir Shah, who came to the States in the sixties to learn the finer details of petroleum engineering, mixed with some advanced chicanery at the Harvard Business School. He was a devout Muslim and the hippie thing took his interest. I think his father had known Aldous back in the bad old days; anyway the kid sank some spare millions into this set-up, in memoriam, with some muddled notion of blending Sufism and high technology. Shortly after it was established, the price of oil rocketed and Hosein came to his senses. I think he's doing very nicely.'
'And you?'
'I was in the right place at the right time. He had it all locked in as a non-profit Foundation, and there's still a trickle of money available to pay for upkeep and incidentals. Most of our funding -- such as it is -- comes from research contracts from NASA and several of the bigger foundations.'
They stepped into a medium-sized room filled with sprawling bodies under lights with a warm golden tinge; heavy curtains covered one wall, blocking the natural illumination from the enormous sky. DelFord flopped on a large bean-bag waving his hands at the floor as the visitors stood perplexed. Sutton let himself down quickly, favouring the creases in his trousers. The other two, after some hesitation, sat on a single large fluffy mattress, Lapp with his broad back against the wall, the physicist hunched forward with his hairy shins exposed.
'Morning folks. As you know, these gentlemen have expressed an interest in our work on ooby. I don't know any more about it than you, right now, but I'm certain we can depend on the general to have something piquant up his sleeve -- like maybe a new device for detecting insipient terrorism by the radical absorption lines in the auric spectrum.' A titter from one corner. Briskly, delFord introduced the visitors. 'Obviously I needn't waste time returning the introductions; I'm sure our friends here have spent many happy minutes studying our files.'
Tony Freestone shifted his great bulk, propping his elbows. 'It's that big?'
'It is.' Sutton refused to be nettled. 'Ladies and gentlemen, let me say personally, and on behalf of my colleagues, that we're pleased to meet you. What Bill states so bluntly is true, but I hope you won't find anything unduly sinister in what is after all a routine pre-briefing procedure.'
'Hell no,' said Alice Langer. 'The price of liberty is eternal voyeurism.'
Audibly, Lennox Harrington's knuckles cracked. He stared at Alice and said precisely, through tight lips, 'At this moment a pair of Army technicians is setting up a small piece of equipment in your main psychophysical laboratory. Outside, a truckload of soldiers is stationed with maser surveillance, two nausea-inducing subsonic generators and a machine gun. The device the technicians are installing is capable of withstanding a ground-zero gigaton nuclear explosion. Perhaps this will enable you to grasp the need for caution.'
In the ensuing silence, Bill delFord waited for Sutton to hit the roof. Instantly he told himself: Don't be foolish. They've brought the thing here for us to study. Why should it matter who tells us about it? But he knew that Harrington's outburst had been a bad lapse. The strain, he thought, must have been immense. He let out his breath, and realised he was trembling. The implications began to race in his mind.
Delwyn Schauble, the bio-feedback specialist, began to giggle. 'And you're telling _us?_' she asked with a squeak.
'We're not the first on the block.' Bill said to her. 'The Israelis and the Russians have it too.'
The babble began, kids let loose in the playground.
'There goes deterrence.'
'The N-country proliferation theorem -- '
'Opportunities for reactor terrorism -- '
'Poor old Teller, all those years -- '
'And what the hell,' broke through Alister Jerison's booming voice, 'does an anti-nuclear shield have to do with astral projection?'
'Let's have a little restraint in here,' Sutton barked. He was met with unfriendly looks, but the room quietened. 'The work your Institute has prosecuted on OOBEs may have a critical bearing on certain by-products of this process. Before we discuss the details, however, it's necessary for Dr Harrington to give you an outline of how the field functions. Lennox?'
With distaste, the physicist stated: 'I cannot pretend that this forum meets with my approval. There is no doubt in my mind that the so-called "paranormal" phenomena with which you waste your time are a congeries of delusive -- ' He halted and licked his lips. 'However, your work on sensory deprivation and overload may well contribute to a solution of our pressing difficulties. The device, as you have understood, is intended as a defense against nuclear attack. Do you have an overhead projector?' He was directed to the display terminal, and rapidly jotted down a series of equations; they were displayed on a large wall screen. After thirty seconds of incomprehensible Hermitian scalar analysis, Bill interrupted him.
'Lennox, I'm sorry but you've lost me. Could we have some approximation of the central data in clear? My math goes about as far as sophomore calculus I'm afraid.'
Lewis Carroll country, Bill thought. _He only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases_. But that was probably unfair. Lennox Harrington doubtless pitched his delivery more generously when giving advice to the ignoramuses of Military Intelligence, but the man was accustomed to the swift cut and thrust of his peers. Even this unruly shambles must project enough of the tone of an academic symposium to cue him in to high-powered exposition.
'I take it you are all familiar with the elements at least of quark confinement theory?' the physicist said impatiently. He pronounced it to rhyme with _cork_ rather than _mark_. 'Most subatomic particles are of the class known as hadrons. These in turn are composed of six kinds of quarks, paired into three generations, and distinguished by mass and other quantum values. Despite strenuous efforts, no one has been able to liberate the quark constituents from baryons and mesons, though they can readily be observed as approximate point-sources inside protons, for example. In fact, M-theory shows that they aren't points at all. My own approach, using N-branes, sees hadrons as strings or membranes, whose vibrational states define each particle's momentum and energy.'
'My God,' Freestone said, 'it's a brane baggie!'
Annoyed, Harrington nodded sharply. 'You could put it that way. Years ago, Kenneth Johnson at MIT proposed that quarks were literally held captive within gluon bags. He was nearly right. They're confined by gluon brane sheets.'
'You've built a bottomless bag,' delFord said, tracing Freestone's intuition. 'No matter how much radiant energy you pour in, it turns into a tougher fabric. What's the, uh, the elastic limit?'