"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 02 - Necromancer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

gnawed out the gold-bearing ore, ground it up to peb-
ble-sized chunks, and sent it by the carload up six hun-
dred feet or more to the open air and the equipment
above. As the mine machinery moved, it created and
abandoned surface shafts, elevator tubes, new exploratory
levels and stopes; and extended the vast central cavern
through which the heavier machinery and its controlling
console slid with the work in progress, laying down rails
before and taking them up behind.
The single engineer on shift at the time controlled all
this. And a touch of megalomania did him no harm on
the job. He was seated before the control panels of the
console like the identity before the brain. His job was the
job of ultimate control. Logical decision, and the facts on
which to base decision were supplied by the computer
element in the equipment. The logically optimum answer
was available at the touch of a button. But it had been
 discovered that, like the process of living itself, there was
more to modern mining than logic.
The best engineers had feel. It was a sensitivity born
of experience, of talent, and even of something like love,
with which they commanded, not only the mountains,
but the machine they rode and directed.
Now this too was added to the list of man's endeavors
for which some special talent was needed. Less than ten
per cent of the young mining engineers graduating every
year turned out to have the necessary extra ability to
become one with the titan they directed. Even in the
twenty-first century's overcrowded employment marts,
mines were continually on the hunt for more shift engi-
neers. Even four hours at a time, and even for the tal-
ented ten per cent, was a long time to be the faultless god
in the machine. And the machinery never rested.

Six hundred feet overhead of the man at the console,
Paul Formain, on his first morning at Malabar Mine,
stepped from his small individual quarters of white bub-
ble plastic, and saw the mountains.
And suddenly, there it was again, as it had been time
and again since his boating accident of five years before,
and had been more recently, lately.
But it was not now the open sea that he saw. Or
even the dreamlike image of a strange, shadowy figure in
some sort of cape and a high-peaked hat, who had seemed
to bring him back to life after he had died in the boat,
and returned him to the boat to be finally found and res-
cued by the coast guard.
This time, it was the mountains.
Suddenly, turning from the white, plastic door, he
stopped and saw them. Around him was a steep slope