"Paul Levinson - A Medal For Harry (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Levinson Paul)

human life in the later 21st century -- but most of all, whether
the United States of North America, still the second most
powerful nation on Earth, might one day come back and reclaim
its throne.

Unlike the Euro imperialists of the 19th century, whose
power derived from far-flung possessions that got minds of their
own in the 20th, the power of America had always come from
within, enhanced now by the voluntary inclusion of Canadian
provinces and Mexican states and Caribbean islands in the
American concordance. This giant was no longer on the cutting
edge of anything any more except antique music and movies,
but it was still a threat. A dull blade can do much damage.

"Insecurity is spelled with an i-n-U-s," Yamakira had said
just last year, "in us, and in U.S." He was the Japanese Freud,
so he should know. Far more than Harry, who was paid with a
lifetime of job stability and semi-respectability not to know
but to do his research. One of many, following a thread.
 The waiter appeared again with green tea and a
check-screen, out of sight before Harry had a chance to look up
and say thank you. He pressed one key for acceptance of the
charges, another for the standard gratuity, and sipped the
liquid. It felt good on his lips, hot enough to inflame his
thermal nerve, not enough to burn.

In a world in which information was everywhere, as ripe for
the taking as fruit in an orchard, those like Harry who
collected information were low on the pole -- easy come, easy
go, like the data they procured, like the waiter with the check.
Spin, relationship, position -- wringing meaning and knowledge
from the information, tea-like, wine-like, magic-like -- that
was the plum job, the one truly worthy of respect.

Yet Harry had found, mostly to his dismay, that sometimes
information is so searing that it writes its own meaning, sets
its own unalterable spin. He hadn't wanted this task, he
reminded himself as he looked at his papers. He hadn't believed
for a minute that this path would lead to anything other than
another dead end. Yet he had done his duty and performed all
the tests as stipulated and compiled the statistics and checked
and rechecked his results and he was now sure that what he held
in his lap like a burning filament was truth. The figures before
and after 1945 were conclusive. The pattern they revealed beyond
contention.

And what was he to do with this truth? Simply state it to
his audience tomorrow at Rockefeller University, the
newly-purchased crown of the Japanese educational system?