"Ian R. Macleod - New Light On The Drake Equation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Macleod Ian R)

The waiter Jean-Beno├оt was busier than usual, and, after giving Tom a glance that almost registered
surprise, took his time coming over. Tom, after all, would be going nowhere in any hurry. And he had his
cards-all six of them-to read. They lay there, face down on the plastic tablecloth; a hand of poker he had
to play. But he knew already what the deal was likely to be. One was blue and almost plain, with a
pattern like rippled water, which was probably some kind of junk mail, and another looked suspiciously
like a bill for some cyber-utility he probably wasn't even using, and the rest, most undoubtedly, were
from his few remaining sponsors. Beside them on the table, like part of a fine still-life into which he and
these cards were an unnecessary intrusion, lay the empty carafe and the wine glasses from which the
lovers had been drinking. Wine at ten in the morning! That was France for you. This was France. And he
could do with a drink himself, could Tom Kelly. Maybe just a pastis, which would sit nicely with the
absinthe he'd had earlier-just as a bracer, mind. Tom sighed and rubbed his temples and looked about
him in the morning brightness. Up at the spire of St. Marie rising over the awnings of the market, then
down at the people, gaudily, gorgeously fashionable in their clothes, their skins, their faces. France, this
real France of the living, was a place he sometimes felt he only visited on these Wednesday-this
Thursday-mornings. He could have been anywhere for the rest of the time, up with the stars there on his
mountain, combing his way through eternity on the increasing offchance of an odd blip. That was why he
was who he was-some old kook whom people like Madame Brissac and Jean-Beno├оt patronized without
ever really knowing. That was why he'd never really got around to mastering this language which was
washing all around him in persibilant waves. Jean-Beno├оt was still busy, flipping his towel and serving up
crepes with an on-off smile of his regulation-handsome features, his wings so well tucked away that no
one would ever really know he had them. Like a lot of the people who worked here, he did the job so he
could take to the air in his free time. Tom, with his trois diget pastis merci, was never going to be much
of a priority.

Tom lifted one of the cards and tried to suppressed a burp as the bitter residue of absinthe flooded his
mouth. The card was from the Aston University, in Birmingham, England, of all places. Now, he'd
forgotten they were even sponsoring him. He ran his finger down the playline, and half-closed his eyes to
witness a young man he'd never seen before in his life sitting at the kind of impressively wide desk that
only people, in Tom's experience, who never did any real work possessed.

"Mister Kelly, it's a real pleasure to make your acquaintance тАж" The young man paused. He was clearly
new to whatever it was he was doing, and gripping that desk as if it was perched at the top of a
roller-coaster ride. "As you may have seen in the academic press, I've now taken over from Doctor Sally
Normanton. I didn't know her personally, but I know that all of you who did valued her greatly, and I,
too, feel saddened by the loss of a fine person and physicist тАж"

Tom withdrew his finger from the card for a moment, and dropped back into France. He'd only ever met
the woman once. She'd been warm and lively and sympathetic, he remembered, and had moved about
on autolegs because of the advanced arthritis which, in those days at least, the vials hadn't been able to
counteract. They'd sat under the mossy trees and statues in Birmingham's Centenary Square, which for
him had held other memories, and she'd sighed and smiled and explained how the basic policy of her
institution had gone firmly against any positive figure to the Drake Equation several decades before, but
Sally Normanton herself had always kept a soft spot for that kind of stuff herself, and she'd really got into
physics in the first place on the back of reading Clarke and Asimov. Not that she imagined Tom had
heard of them? But Tom had, of course. They were of almost of the same generation. He'd developed a
dust allergy from hunching over those thrilling, musty analog pages as a kid. They chatted merrily, and on
the walk back to the campus Sally Normanton had confided as she heaved and clicked on her legs that
she had control of a smallish fund. It was left over from some government work, and was his to have for
as long as it took the accountants to notice. And that was more than twenty years ago. And now she was