"Peter F. Hamilton - The White Stuff" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

He stood there for maybe half a minute. "Hell." He ran out into the landing, but the lift door was already
closing. "Good luck, Miranda," he shouted after her. "I want to wish you good luck."

***

The TV news was overloading on afto-aspro. Half of the nine o'clock news was devoted to the new
manufacturing revolution, hot young reporters tackling happy punters. Studio talking heads followed with
hyper-cautious interpretations of its possible consequences. The end of large-scale industrialisation, the
start of a true global village economy, green, clean, and noncompetitive.

"Bollocks," Nigel snapped. He fired the remote, wiping out the report. De-industrialisation wasn't the
outcome, he was sure of it. Instinct was strong here, a lifetime of feeling the patterns spoke to him.

He pulled his laptop over, flipped it open, and after a while, began to type.

***

"Dump every electronics share we have," Nigel told Austin St. Clair next morning.

"Are you insane?" the supervisor bawled. Outside the glass walls chairs had become as redundant as
silicon; everyone stood, shouting and waving at each other like bookies on speed. Gold was still rising.
Governments were issuing optimistic forecastsтАФnobody was paying attention. VDUs were flashing up
red starburst symbols as the electronics market crashed. "If we sell now, we'll lose over a quarter of a
billion. Totally outside my authority. I won't be working the floor, I'll be fucking sweeping it!"

"We'll lose a lot more if we hang on to them."

"It'll bottom out. It looks bad, but it always bottoms out. Intel and Fujitsu have already announced they're
going to start afto-aspro production; the rest will follow."

"It doesn't matter. Those kind of companies are obsolete now. It took an investment of half a billion
dollars to build every new chip plant; and two years later the next generation processor would come
along, and you'd have to rebuild. That's why only the rich countries ever produced the damn things. The
whole point of afto-aspro is that it doesn't need that kind of investment. Right now, the dumbest people
in the country are making afto-aspro in rooms full of cockroaches. Don't you get it? There is no more
electronics industry. It just went the same way as gas lamps and vinyl records."

"Christ!" Austin thumped a fist on his desk, then jammed the grazed knuckles into his mouth. "Oh Christ,
Nigel."

"It doesn't matter. We can get the company out. Buy engineering, the heavier the better. Firms which
make big, solid, bulky metal products: ships, cranes, combine harvesters, bridges, cement lorries, steam
rollers, trains, hell even washing machines are mostly mechanical. Afto-aspro can't replace that. And
those shares are a good buy right now. Everyone was so keen to get into sunrise technologies and
multimedia bollocks we ignored the fundamentals. If we move quick we can recoup our losses on
electronics. But it's got to be now, Austin. The market will figure it out; capital is going to flood into that
section. If you're smart, we'll be ahead of them."

***