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

"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?"
"Not really. Remember, the center of power is seven thousand .kilometers away.
Here at the surface the earth elemental is pretty weak. It would be different
if we were near a power locus, like an active volcano or an earthquake zone."
"I see," said Ramsey. "Tell me, what exactly is an elemental? It's something
you've talked about, but I don't really know just what it is. Something
to do with Earth, Air, Fire, and Water; right?"
"Something like that," she said. "Any sufficiently complex ensemble of
symbolically interrelated objects, when interacting with a symbol manipulating
object, such as a man or a large computer, will exhibit no stochastic
behavior-"'
"Thanks a lot," Ramsey interjected. "How 'bout doing it in English?"
"Sorry," she said. "Let's see. Inanimate objects sometimes react to magic as
if they had intelligence of their own. No, that's not quite right . . . call
it volition. ')'hey react as if they had a will of their own."
"Sure," said Ramsey. "That's just Murphy's law. I used to have a '34
Sparrowhawk that damn sure had a mind of its own, I'll tell you."
"Well, that's partly it. In general, this only applies to really large
systems, though. Things much more complicated than a car. The ocean, the
atmosphere .~. . the earth. In terms of thaumaturgy, we can deal with these
almost as if they were separate, quasi-sentient entities.
"Whenever thaumaturgy is done on such complex systems, portions of the system
you don't intend to disturb are still necessarily affected by the magic. This
excess power-call it the side effect if you want-is free to be manipulated by
the `volition' of the entity, which we call an `elemental.' "
"So an elemental isn't something that's already there. It's something you
create when you do magic."
"Not really. The elemental is inherent to start with in any complex system.
But until that system is acted on by symbol manipulation-magic-the elemental
is constrained to obey statistical laws. The use of magic can remove these
constraints, and thus unleash the elemental. "
"Oh," said Ramsey. "So what do you do? Talk with it? What's it good for?"
"You can't really talk with an elemental. It has no true intelligence. At
least not as we know it. You can communicate with it somewhat, using a
symbolic meta-language. Aside from studying the elemental for research, like
I'm doing, there's several things that elemental magic is practical for. For
one thing, it's very useful for power control. An elemental has direct, fine
control over huge amounts of power. The energy has to be already there; the
elemental just gives you the control'."
"I see," said Ramsey. "Kind of like a light switch."
"Right. Or a detonator."
Over the next couple of days Ramsey recalibrated all his equipment, changed
his instruments, took readings at every time of day, and tried every trick he