"Robert Grossbach - Of Scorned Women and Causal Loops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grossbach Robert)

of scorned women and
causal loops
ROBERT GROSSBACH

HereтАЩs a sly and intelligent look at the proposition that maybe, just
maybe, you should sometimes just shut up and listen, no matter how
smart you think you are . . .

Robert Grossbach has spent many years working in
aerospace/defense, during which time he published three novels, Never
Say Die, Someone Great, and Easy and Hard Ways Out, the last of which
was made into the movie Best Defense. He has also done a number of
movie novelizations and screenplays. His short fiction has appeared
primarily in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, with several
sales in the 1980s as well as a handful of recent ones. Currently he is
working on a novel entitled A Short-age of Engineers. He lives in
Commack, New York.

****




A
t Cornavin Station the rental agency had given him one of the new
Electriques with the re-designed fuel cells, and heтАЩd accepted it reluctantly,
knowing it would not have the pickup of the old gas-driven models. Yes,
yes, of course it was a thousand times better for the environment, ten
thousand times, but still he liked the feel of the gas pedal, preferred it over
the accelerator. One more thing to make him cranky, as if the TGV ride
from Paris, his sore left buttock, and FranceтАЩs first round World Cup
elimination werenтАЩt irritants enough.

He drove now on the Route de Meyrin, westbound from Geneva,
passing a new outdoor shopping mall, the giant Thompson CSF and IBM
buildings, an auto-mated radar speed monitor, and a Citroen dealership,
regarding all with a faintly disapproving and dyspeptic eye, which was how
he viewed everything, for reasons heтАЩd never cared to plumb. After eight
kilometers, he arrived at a hangar-sized building of corrugated metal,
situated amidst a scattered complex of structures, all surrounded by a
paved parking lot and double chainlink fence. The sign over the guard
booth read ORGANIZATION EUROPEENE POUR LA RECHERCHE
NUCLEAIRE, or, as the English and Americans called it, CERN (ignoring in
their usual obtuse manner that the first word had been changed from
CONSEIL nearly seven decades earlier).

He flashed his credential at the guard, passed with an indifferent wave
through a flimsy-looking gate, and parked next to a blue Mercedes. He
locked the doors of the Electrique out of habit, and trudged toward the
building, upper left ham-string throbbing at each step. On a low hill just