"C M Kornbluth - Gomez" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

For a reporter, I felt strangely shy. "What's he driving at?" I asked.

"I think," he said slowly, "he's approaching a unified field theory."

Apparently that was supposed to explain everything. I let Dr. Mines know that it didn't.

He said thoughtfully: "I don't know whether I can get it over to a layman-no offense, Vilchek. Let's put it
this way. You know how math comes in waves, and how it's followed by waves of applied science
based on the math. There was a big wave of algebra in the middle ages-following it came navigation,
gunnery, surveying, and so on.



Then the renaissance and a wave of analysis-what you'd call calculus. That opened up steam power and
how to use it, mechanical engineering, electricity. The wave of modern mathematics since say eighteen
seventy-five gave us atomic energy. That boy upstairs may be starting off the next big wave."

He got up and reached for his hat.

"Just a minute," I said. I was surprised that my voice was steady. "What conies next? Control of gravity?
Control of personality? Sending people by radio?"

Dr. Mines wouldn't meet my eye. Suddenly he looked old and shrunken. "Don't worry about the boy,"
he said.

I let him go.

That evening I brought Gomez chicken pot pie and a nonalcoholic eggnog.-He drank the eggnog, said,
"Hi, Beel," and continued to cover yellow sheets of paper.

I went downstairs and worried.

Abruptly it ended late the next afternoon. Gomez wandered into the big first-floor kitchen looking like a
starved old rickshaw coolie. He pushed his lank hair back from his forehead, said: "Beel, what is to eat-"
and pitched forward onto the linoleum. Leitzer came when I yelled, expertly took Gomez's pulse, rolled
him onto a blanket, and threw another one over him. "It's just a faint," he said. "Let's get him to bed."

"Aren't you going to call a doctor, man?"

"Doctor couldn't do anything we can't do," he said stolidly. "And I'm here to see that security isn't
breached. Give me a hand."

We got him upstairs and put him to bed. He woke up and said something in Spanish, and then,
apologetically: "Very sorry, fellows. I ought to taken it easier."

"I'll get you some lunch," I said, and he grinned.

He ate it all, enjoying it heartily, and finally lay back gorged. "Well," he asked me, "what it is new, Beel?"

"What is new. And you should tell me. You finish your work?"