"Alan Dean Foster- Instant With Loud Voices" - читать интересную книгу автора (Foster Alan Dean)

"Ready," replied a tech.

"Secondary, Matrix?"

"On-line," came the quiet announcement.

Strevelle was too prosaic to construct a dramatic gesture. He just touched the button.
Banks of monitors sang in unison behind the watchers. Beyond the angled glass, out in The Room,
thousands of tiny indicator lights suddenly flared green, red, blue. The inspiration was wholly mechanical,
but it had the look of a hundred Christmas trees suddenly winking to life simultaneously, and provoked
appreciative murmurs of admiration from the non-scientists in the group.

There were eight DISRA-2's emplaced in major cities across the United States, four more in Europe,
four again in Japan. The Japanese were not involved in the question because of time-sharing conflicts and
other problems. Together, the sixteen constituted the Secondary Matrix. They would combine to ask the
question which DISRA Prime would attempt to answer.

Six massive communications satellites were temporarily taken out of commercial service to shunt the
constituents of the question to DISRA, shutting down half the communications of Europe and the
continental United States for fully eight minutes. It was dark outside The Room and still not morning in
London. The timing had been carefully planned to cause minimal disruption to the world's commerce.

Five months of laborious pre-programming now spewed in an electronic torrent from two continents into
the waiting storage banks of DISRA Prime, filling them to capacity.

The eight minutes passed in tense silence. Jerome found that his palms were damp.

The digital clock on the wall marked time silently, continued past the eight minute mark as the technician
on Strevelle's right said calmly, "Programming received."

In The Room DISRA glowed like some ponderous deep-sea monster, awaiting instructions. It's not
human, Jerome reminded himself firmly. It's different, and in its limited way superior, but it's not human.
Even Strevelle agrees to that.

Strevelle touched the button beneath the plate which read, "Process question," then sat back and lit a
small, feminine cigar. The onlookers shuffled uneasily. A red light came on beneath another readout and
the single word everyone was waiting for appeared there: WORKING.

Someone made a bad joke in French. A few people laughed softly. Everything was functioning properly.
It was the import of the question that had been put to DISRA which was making them nervous, not any
fear of mechanical failure.

DISRA worked on the question, digesting at incredible speed the immense volume of programming it had
been fed. Normally, the most complicated inquiry took less than three minutes to solve. The digital on the
wall counted.

Half an hour passed. The readout on the console glowed steadily red. WORKING. The lights behind the
transparent panels of the machine flashed rapidly, efficiently. While they waited, the onlookers discussed
science, politics, their personal travails and problems.