"Elemental" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)
Geoffrey A. Landis ELEMENTAL
1. Ramsey
Fifty kilometers southeast of Naples, two men sat waiting in the bright fluorescent-lit power control room of Napoli Spaceport. In front of them glowed an array of green lights and computer consoles. Behind them, outlined on the floor in a violet glow only faintly visible in the brightness of the room, was a complex five-fold symmetric figure: a pentacle.
The younger man watched the array of dials intensely, occasionally touching a knob to make some infinitesimal adjustment. The older man watched him work. What he saw seemed to satisfy him, for he strolled over to the window and gazed out across the landing field.
Without looking up, the younger man spoke: "Luna shuttle's about ready to lift, Mr. Layr."
"Ready for it, Carlo?"
"Running steady at a hundred ten percent, sir."
"She's all yours." Christian Layr walked over to a monitor screen where he could watch the youth's performance and take over if necessary. He doubted that any such necessity would arise. There is a certain skill to controlling magic, a skill of balance and timing not unlike that of a juggler, and the boy had it. Layr almost wished something would go wrong, so he could see how the boy would handle it. The youth had the talent, but Layr would feel uneasy about certifying him until he saw how he tackled a real problem, one of the minor emergencies that make power control a job for men with skill and courage, rather than a simple task for machines. Despite Layr's unspoken wish, though,
for the last ten days the station had operated smoothly.
Almost too smoothly.
Layr heard the nearly subsonic rumble of power build-up and directed his attention back to the display. Power level a hundred fifteen percent; there would be no problem with this one.
"Here it goes."
Layr glanced up to the window. As if by magic, the blunt-nosed spacecraft appeared from the launch pit to hover for an instant before his eyes. Slowly it began to inch upward, then to hasten forward with an implacable urgency, finally to rush with a clap of thunder headlong into the morning sky, as if all the demons of hell chased after it.
In a sense, they did. Behind him the control pentagram lit the room with a brilliant violet fire as it transmitted the energy flux to shove the thousand-ton shuttle up to parking orbit. Far beneath his feet, the main pentacle glowed, not violet, but gamma. No human eye could ever look upon it in its full glory. Within the impenetrable walls of the protecting spell was confined a more powerful magic yet: two hundred kilograms of pure antimatter.
In Chicago it was 7 A.M. Yawning, Ramsey Washington looked out the window of his third-floor apartment. A soft wet snow fell steadily. It masked the outlines of the tenements and weighed down the branches of the evergreen that struggled to grow in the building's entrance courtyard. He cursed softly.
Perfect Christmas weather-in April. Some bureaucrat at the weather service must have thought it a good April fool's joke. More likely, he reflected, they'd
needed a blizzard here as the best way to equalize a water imbalance elsewhere in the world. Africa or Antarctica or Alabama or somewhere. Maybe it had been announced and he'd just missed it.
He dug through the cluttered drawers of his desk and came up with a usable piece of blue chalk and a battered secondhand hardcopy of the Handbook of Thaumaturgy, 2052nd edition. He cleared the accumulation of dirty clothes and half-written papers from a one-meter circle on the floor, then carefully chalked a pentacle, copying exactly the diagram in the book. He chanted the book's recommended spell sequence and stepped inside. Spell completed, he grabbed his data microdisc and headed outside.
As he entered the snowstorm, a circle of warm air formed around him. Although by now the snow was nearly twenty centimeters deep over the walk, where he stepped and for a one meter circle around him the snow vanished, reappearing magically behind him again as he walked onward.
Protected by his home-made ward, Ramsey ignored the snowstorm swirling about him. As he walked under the low hanging branch of the evergreen in the
courtyard he ducked his head instinctively. Anyone as tall as Ramsey quickly learns to duck without ever really noticing it. As he walked under the tree, the snow on the branch above vanished, exorcised by the snow ward. Freed, the branch sprang up, smacking the branch above it and shaking loose a new mound of snow. In a chain reaction of unleashed branches, the whole tree shook itself free of its burden of snow.
Ramsey's low-power spell had been designed to protect against a pretty heavy snowstorm, but it had never been intended to stop an avalanche. The spell overloaded with a loud pop. He abruptly found himself up to his armpits in snow.
Ramsey heard a giggling somewhere behind him, and whirled around to see who was laughing. Unfortunately, the snow was rather more slippery than he'd anticipated. His feet skidded out from under him, and he landed flat on his back in a flurry of snow. Helpless, he heard the giggling rise into a robust laugh. ,
He pulled himself carefully to his feet. "Have you no respect for the mortally wounded?" He shook himself off and glanced surreptitiously at the girl standing on the sidewalk laughing.
"Oh!" The girl rushed over. "I'm sorry! Are you hurt? Where?"
"My dignity, woman, my dignity's taken a mortal wound. I may never recover. "
"Oh, poor baby!" she replied in mock seriousness. "Shall I kiss it and make it better?"
"Hey, that's the best offer I've had all day," said Ramsey. He looked up at the girl and grinned, "Say, you mind if I ask a dumb question? What's your
deep in conversation. "I'll need all the luck 1 can get."
In Italy it was early afternoon. The sun beat down warmly, as might be expected on a day in early April. In the fields, two farmers stopped working the rich volcanic soil to rest in the shade of a solar array. One of them brought out .he midday snack of bread, wine, and cheese, while the other hooked the tractors up to recharge.
"Explain once more to Giuseppe how it is that your vines produce so bountifully this year."
"It is because of this amulet of my wife's mother." Luca held up a small piece of carved volcanic rock suspended on a silver chain. Giuseppe looked at it dubiously.
"That? It is no different than the one my wife wears about her neck to ward off the evil eye. Yet my vines do not produce like yours."
"Ah," said Luca smugly, "wearing is not enough. You must know how to use it."
"Ah," said Giuseppe. "So tell me, how is it done, to use this thing?"
"And why is it I should say to you?"
"Come, Luca. Did we not grow up together? Are we not friends? How is it that you would now hold out on your poor friend Giuseppe?" .
"Indeed," said the other, "I would not. This is what is to be done. Each morning before going into the fields you must take the amulet and make with it this gesture-" he demonstrated with his hands "-and say the following chant-" he intoned a short series of nonsense-sounding syllables.
Giuseppe was still dubious. "That's all?"
"Indeed."
"It would be simple ,enough for me to try. Father Corsi would not approve, though. He would call it witch work."
"There is no need for Father Corsi to know. Besides, he is surely aware of how many of his flock wear charms against the evil eye, no`'"
"Yes. And he calls it idolatry, too."
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