"Tom Maddox - Gravity's Angel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maddox Tom)

So moonlight flashed through the bicycle frame as I rode the berm road above
the SSC, and finally I realized I had no answers to what perplexed me, and I turned
around and headed back toward home.

I rode through sheets of darkened homes and came to my driveway, where a
light burned on a pole, walked the Invisible Bicycle up to the door, and went in to
absolute silence. On a low table in the living room, I found a note:

Dear Sax,
I have gone back to Los Alamos.
DonтАЩt worry about me, IтАЩm fine. I just need to think about what
happened here.
Thank you for all youтАЩve done.
Carol

Over the next weeks, as the full-energy trials came closer, I thought often
about Carol Hendrix, her singularity, and the treatment sheтАЩd gotten.

I went back to Thursday Group the next week but found I had little to say to
any of themтАФthe whole bunch seemed to be strutting apes, obsessed with their own
importance and show. If they were interested in the truth, and particularly in new,
interesting truths, then why hadnтАЩt they treated Carol Hendrix with the seriousness
her ideas deserved? Her ideas were strange, but important ideas always were. She
was a woman, but so what? How could that matter?

All of a sudden, I felt a fool. Their conversation excluded everyone who was
not a member of the group, and their masculinity, while entirely free of conscious
malice, effectively recognized only its own kind. A young, small woman simply did
not exist for them as a physicist to be taken seriously.

I left early that evening and decided I would not go back.

But what I had seen at Thursday Group was everywhere at the lab.
Secretar-ies were women, scientists and administrators were menтАФwhite men by
and large, with a sprinkling of Orientals. Carol Hendrix was right: I was incredibly
naive. But I understood why. As a high-energy physicist, I had been devoted to what
I thought of as an unbiased search for the truth, a search that creates intense tunnel
vision, because of how difficult it is, it demands absolutely everything you can bring
to it, and often that isnтАЩt quite enough. Now I had awakened, and what I saw
appalled and confused me.

I got one note from Carol Hendrix, apologizing for leaving so abruptly and
saying that she would write again when she had gotten her thoughts straightened out.
Then, five days before the first full-energy, highтАФbeta runs, she called me at the
office. тАЬSax,тАЭ she said. тАЬIтАЩd like to come watch the runs. Would you mind?тАЭ

****

Carol leaned over me, slid her body down mine, pulled the gown over her head. She
was astride me, hands at her side as she moved in rhythmic arcs. тАЬThe stars,тАЭ she