"Ken Macleod - Fall Revolution 3 - The Cassini Division" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

term; the others included тАЬparasitesтАЭ, тАЬscabsтАЭ, тАЬscumтАЭ, and spoken with a sneer and a pretend spit
тАЬbankersтАЭ.) It was considered all right to exchange coins with them for their odd handicrafts and
eccentric nanofactures, and to employ them as guides but most people shrank from any closer
contact, as if the non-cos carried some invisible skin disease.
 тАЬA few,тАЭ she said, looking relieved. тАЬIтАЩm studying, you know, trade Patterns in the Thames
Valley.тАЭ
тАЬTrade patterns?тАЭ
тАЬMost people think the non-cos live by scrounging stuff from the Union, but thatтАЩs just a
prejudice.тАЭ She grimaced; she was still talking in a low voice, as if not wanting the other
passengers to overhear. тАЬActually theyтАЩre pretty self-sufficient. They make things and swap them
among themselves, using little metal weights for indirect swaps. ThatтАЩs why whenever they offer
to do things for tourists, they only do it for metal weights.тАЭ Suze laughed. тАЬThere I go again. IтАЩm
sure you know all this.тАЭ
тАЬWell, in theory,тАЭ I admitted, тАЬbut itтАЩll be interesting to see how it works in practice. The fact is,
IтАЩm going to London to find a certain person.тАЭ I thought about risks. IтАЩd be making inquiries after
this guy as soon as we landed, among all kinds of people. No matter how discreet I was about it,
word would get around. There seemed to be no harm in starting now. тАЬHis name is Isambard
Kingdom Malley.тАЭ
тАЬHeтАЩs alive?тАЭ Suze sounded incredulous. тАЬIn London?тАЭ Comprehension dawned on her face.
тАЬYes,тАЭ I said. тАЬHeтАЩs a non-co.тАЭ
Isambard Kingdom Malley was, or had been, a physicist. He worked out the Theory of
Everything. The final equations. When I was as young as I look, there was a fashion for tee shirts
with the Malley equations on them. TOE shirts, we called them. The equations, at least, were
elegant.
Malley was born in 2039, so he was six years old at the time of the Fall Revolution. His theory
was born in the early 2o6os, in the brief surge of new technologies and research advances that
marked the period when the US/UN empire had fallen, but the barbarians had not yet won. His last
paper was the modest classic Space-time manipulation with non-exotic matter, Malley, I K, Phys.
Rev. D 128 (10), 3182 (2080). It established the theoretical possibility of the quantum-chaotic
wormhole and the vacuum-fluctuation virtual mass drive. Its celebrated тАЬAppendix II: Engineering
ConsiderationsтАЭ pointed out some practical problems with constructing the Gate and the Drive,
notably that it would require about a billion times as much computational power as was currently
available.
A week after the articleтАЩs publication, the journal was shut down by the gang in charge of its
local fragment of the Former United States, for тАЬun-Scriptural physical speculationтАЭ, тАЬblasphemyтАЭ,
and (according to some sources) тАЬwitchcraftтАЭ. ThereтАЩs a certain elegiac aptness in the thought that
the paper which pointed the road to the stars was published in what turned out to be the journalтАЩs
final issue: the West was still soaring when it fell.
Thirteen years later, the Outwarders built the wormhole gate and torched off their interstellar
probe, reaching for the end of space and time. That it never did reach the expected end that it was,
in fact, still going strong, still transmitting almost incomprehensible data from an unimaginable
futurity refuted MalleyтАЩs Theory of Everything, which had been based on the hitherto impregnable
Standard Model finite-universe cosmology. But MalleyтАЩs was still the only theory we had. It fitted
all the data, except the irrefragable fact of the probe. Within the limits of our engineering, the
theory still worked. Nobody had come up with anything to replace it. (This was a sore point with
me. I sometimes thought it reflected badly on our society: perhaps, after all, it does take some
fundamental social insecurity to sharpen the wits of genius. Perhaps we had no more chance of
developing further fundamental physics than the Pacific Islanders had of developing the steam
engine. Or I hoped it could just be that a Newton, an Einstein or a Malley doesnтАЩt come along very
often.) I suspected that Malley would have been an Outwarder himself, but he never made it to