"Eric Flint - 1632" - читать интересную книгу автора (Flint Eric)

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The mystery would never be solved. It would simply join others, like the Tunguska event or the
Square Crater on Callisto, in the catalogue of unexplained occurrences. The initial worldwide
excitement waned within a few months, as it became clear that no quick answers would be found.
For a few years grieving relatives would, with some success, press officialdom to maintain the
studies and inquiries. But there were no lawyers to keep the fires stoked. The courts ruled soon
enough that the Grantville Disaster was an Act of God, for which insurance companies were not
liable. Within ten years, the Disaster had devolved into another domain of fanatics and
enthusiasts, like the Kennedy Assassination. Thereafter, of course, it enjoyed a near-eternal
half-life. But few if any reputable scientists in the world held out any hope for a final explanation.


Theories, of course, abounded. But the vague traces on instruments were impossible to decipher
clearly. A small black hole, passing through the Earth. That was one theory. AnotherтАФpopular for
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a time until the underlying mathematics were rejected in the light of later discoveriesтАФwas that a
fragmented superstring had struck the planet a glancing blow.

The only man who ever came close to understanding that a new universe had been created was a
biologist. A junior biologist by the name of Hank Tapper, attached almost as an afterthought to
one of the geological teams sent to study the disaster. The team devoted several months to a study
of the terrain which had replaced what had once been part of West Virginia. They came to no
conclusions other than the obvious fact that the terrain was not indigenous to the area, but
thatтАФthis eliminated the once-avid interest of the SETI crowdтАФit was clearly terrestrial.

The size of the foreign terrain was mapped, quite precisely. It formed a perfectly circular
hemisphere about six miles in diameter, approximately half that deep at its center. Once the team
left, Tapper remained behind for a few more months. Eventually, he identified the fauna and flora
as being almost identical to those of parts of Central Europe. He became excited. That matched
the archaeological report, whichтАФvery, very diffidentlyтАФsuggested that the ruined farmhouses on
the new terrain had a vaguely late-medieval/early modern Germanic feel to them. So did the
seven human corpses found in one of the farmhouses. Two men, two women, and three children.
The remains were badly charred by the fire, but marks on the bones indicated that at least two of
the people had been murdered by some kind of large cutting implements.

The dental evidence suggested that the dead people were not modern. Or, at least, had somehow
never been given any kind of dental treatment. But medical examination determined that the
murders were very recent. And the farmhouses were still smoldering when they were found.

Tapper teetered on the edge of the truth. Then, after several more months of work failed to turn
up any matching piece of disturbed terrain anywhere in central Europe, he abandoned the study
altogether. He had suspicions, butтАФ