"Elemental" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

"But isn't it rather dangerous?"
"Manifesting the elemental'? Yes, 1 suppose it is, but I've been working with it for years, and there are a lot of controls built in. Actually, it's pretty well confined to the Earth's core. I don't expect any trouble."
"No, no-I mean Venus. Isn't Venus rather dangerous?"
She laughed. "You've been watching too many drama tapes. Venus is about as safe as Earth. Maybe safer. Same technology as your little snow-spell, but a whole lot more reliable, keeps the heat and atmosphere out.
"My only real worry is that I might accidentally forget the rules against incidental magic and get myself booted out. "
"Rules?"
"Venus base has very strict laws forbidding any use of 'incidental' magic. Lighting cigarettes; untying knots, that sort of thing. It's a sensible enough rule. It's the ward spells that keep the whole place from being uninhabitable, so it's understandable that they'd be a bit picky about anything that could conceivably result in an accidental cancellation of a key spell. But I'll miss being able to play."
She snapped her fingers. A tiny ball of pink fire popped out of the air and settled in her palm. "All us thaumaturges like to play with spells."
She tossed the ball of fire to her other hand and grinned wickedly. "But wanton magicing is a bad habit to get into. After all, if too many people start playing with magic without the strict safeguards built into commercial spells, the
side effects could add up, and who knows what could happen'?" She snapped her fingers once again. The tiny fireball flashed blue, then vanished with a pop.
"You mean, like, if I made my snow spell wrong it could cause an earthquake in Katmandu?" asked Ramsey.
"A snowstorm more likely, unless you've got a pretty unusual snow ward. For an earthquake you'd need to awaken the earth elemental. That's my job."
Walking to the lab after lunch, Ramsey heard a low roar. As he approached, it got louder.
Now he could heat a voice, barely audible above the roar. Susan? It sounded like she was in trouble.
He ran to her lab. Unlocked. He shoved the door open, and a spray of water rushed out at him.
Inside was-chaos. He looked down into the lab. Susan stood in front of a computer terminal, waist deep in swirling brown water. Her hands flew about frantically as she intoned a rapid series of spells. In front of her, a fountain of water gushed out of midair two meters off the floor. Arranged in a circle around this strange waterfall burned six candles in arcanely carved copper stands.
Ramsey ran down the steps and waded into the room.
"Susan! What's going on?"
She looked up. "Ramsey! Thank God! I've got a runaway! If the water rises up and puts out the candles, we're in big trouble!"
The candleholders were already submerged. The water level was about ten centimeters below the flames, rising slowly.
"What can I do?"
"I don't dare move. Find some way to stop the flow! But for God's sake, don't put out any of the candles!"
"How do I stop it"
"I don't know! Figure something out!" She went back to chanting.
Ramsey grabbed a book, waded over to the fountain, and pressed it against the stream of water. Water spurted around the edges unimpeded. He pressed harder. The book passed right through the source of the waterfall. Ramsey, unprepared for the sudden loss of resistance, nearly fell on his face.
This wouldn't work. He needed another approach.
A fire extinguisher caught his eye. Good against fire, not water. Or was it? He grabbed it off the wall and tried it. Yes; the right type. He aimed it at the fountain and blasted. The frigid blast froze the water where it struck, but the torrent rushed the ice away as fast as it formed. No good.
He walked around the fountain, looking for a weak spot. The water was now about three centimeters from the candle flames. Susan had paused in her chanting and was watching him.
From the back, he could see that the water came from a one-centimeter hole suspended in midair. If he could block it, the flow would stop. He tried the extinguisher. By directing the cold blast around the edges of the hole, he found he could create a ring of ice, hanging in the air, through which. the torrent passed. But the hole wouldn't freeze closed; the Water was moving too fast.
Holding the extinguisher on the hole with his left hand, he rummaged through his pockets with his right hand until he found a coin of the right size. He pulled
it out of his pocket and carefully placed it up against the ring of ice from the back. The water pressure pushed it up against the ring and held it. He used a blast from the fire extinguisher to freeze it into place.
The torrent stopped.
"Great!" said Susan. "Hold it there while I reverse the invocation." She tapped something into the qwerty behind her and then made a gesture. The water started to drain. "Okay, now extinguish the candles."
When Ramsey blew out the last candle there was a soft pop. The ice-coated coin fell into the water. He walked over and passed his hand through where it had been. Nothing there.
Somewhere later they sat in the coffee lounge sipping hot chocolate. "You were quite the sorcerer's apprentice today," Ramsey commented. "What was going on back there, anyway?"
"I don't know exactly," replied Su
san, "but I can guess. That lab is also
used for Kirschmeyer's intermediate
thaumaturgy course. I think one of the
students set up to summon the air elemental and screwed up. Instead of calling air, he somehow got the wate air
elemental. Rather than abort the summons, he panicked and ran. He must
have left a latent connection with the nearest large body of water: Lake Michigan.
"I should have done a latency check, before I started work. I was in a hurry, though-not much time left before I leave-and skipped it. So when I invoked the earth elemental, I inadvertently opened the portal at the same time.
"That's about it. The portal was
within the pentacle I'd made for the earth elemental; so I couldn't dismiss the earth elemental until it was closed. 1 couldn't close it until there was nothing flowing through it. And I couldn't leave my own pentacle, or 1'd lose my control of the earth elemental. So 1 was stuck. "
"What would have happened if 1 hadn't come along? Kept on gushing until it drained the lake?"
"Oh, no. After an hour or so the portal would have phased out. By that time the water would have made quite a mess, though."
"Oh," said Ramsey. "So there wasn't ever any real danger?"
"No," said Susan. "Actually, the water elemental is pretty tame. That's about as far out of control as I've ever seen it. The one I'm working with-the Earth elemental-is quite a bit more powerful. In fact, if it were ever fully summoned it would be rather awesome. Since its power is concentrated at the center of the earth, though, it's pretty hard to awaken fully. The research I do invokes its presence without really fully awakening it. Tickling the toes of the sleeping giant, so to speak."
"That's not dangerous?"