"Geoffrey A. Landis - Elemental (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Landis Geoffrey A)

bad about to happen. But what person stops just when things start to go well?
He shook his head and once more began to make the now-familiar set of
gestures. As he started the chant, he could feel the power begin to draw
itself about him.
Away in the distance, a plume of steam ascended from the mountain into
Elemental
the clear blue sky. Just as it had done on afternoons like this for thousands
of years.
Late Wednesday night, Ramsey was still trying to pinpoint his problem. About
midnight he ran into Susan outside her office. "Susan! You're still here? I
thought you left hours ago."
"1 should have. Just one more thing to finish off before I leave. You ready
for a break? Want to get some coffee?"
"Sure."
Over at the coffee lounge, Ramsey asked about something Susan had mentioned
earlier. "The reason the ancients never got their magic technology to work is
that they never learned that most spells change with time'?"
"Partly. So on the rare occasions somebody wrote down a working spell
sequence, in a decade or so it would be useless anyway. The so-called
'magicians' back then were pretty secretive about what they did. They didn't
write down very much. Also, even when they learned that a spell sequence had
changed, they had no method to figure out what it changed to."
"How's that done now?"
"You can get good approximations by analytic methods. To get a spell exactly,
we do an exhaustive computer search. We just have the computer try out every
possible variation on the initial approximation until we get the answer. "
"You mean computers can do magic?"
"Mais oui. Of course. Magic is just a form of mathematics. Anything that can
manipulate symbols can do magic." She looked down at her coffee. Cold.
She muttered a spell and snapped her fingers. "Want yours warmed up too?"
"Warmed up? It's just barely cooled down enough to drink," he said. "So if
they had computers in medieval times, all the would-be witches and sorcerers
would have been able to do real magic?"
"Unlikely. They had a lot of other misconceptions, too. One or two might have
lucked onto a spell that worked, but mostly they didn't go about it in the
right way. First, they expected their spells to make sense. They thought the
symbols used in thaumaturgy should mean something in English, or at least in
Latin or Sanskrit or something.
"Second, a whole lot of what they tried to use magic for back in the middle
ages simply can't be done by thaumaturgy. Turning lead into gold, coal into
diamond; that's easy. We do that routinely. But things like eternal youth, or
love potions, those you can't easily do using magic. Biological systems are
just too complex. For that sort of stuff you need a biochemist, not a
magician."
"You don't say. Know any who can get me some of that elixir of eternal youth?"
" 'Fraid not. 1 know a few who are working on it."
"Figures. How about a good love potion, then?"
"That can be arranged. But what would you need a love potion for, though?" She
looked at him coyly.
He missed her look, or else ignored it. "Oh . . . I'm sure 1 could find some