"Quantum Leap - Prelude" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCollum Michael)

"Now you're going to get a decent meal. Then you're going to go back to your hotelЧthey kept your stuff for you, but it's a different room, of courseЧand you're going to get some rest without a nurse hovering over you." Al looked over his friend critically. "You feeling okay?"
The chuckle softened to a smile; the smile faded, and one lean hand came up to brush against his left temple and the streak of white that marked where he'd been struck. "I'm okay," he said. "A little tired, that's all."
"Well, relax." Al checked his watch, touched a lever to lower the window enough to peek out and sniff the breeze. He wanted a cigar in the worst way, but he'd wait. It probably wouldn't be fair to subject a convalescent to an El Supremo. "It's going to be a good twenty minutes before we get where we're going."
"Okay." Sam put the box down on the floor of the vehicle beside him and lay back on the seat. He kept one hand on the box at all times.
Twenty minutes later, as promised, the limo purred to a stop. Sam had fallen into an uneasy doze, and Al nudged him awake with some reluctance.
"Hey, pal, rise and shine. We're here."
"Where's here?" Sam mumbled.
"Best Italian restaurant in Washington, D.C."
It was, too. It was a hole-in-the-wall place, with spotless linen tablecloths and the back wall covered by a wine rackЧ "That's the vino di casa, Sam, the really good stuff is in the cellars." Al was on a first-name basis with waiters, cashiers, owners, and probably the dishwashers, and rattled on in fluent Italian with everyone who came by the table to say hello. Greetings were brief, though, and they were left alone. Even the other diners only glanced their way and kept their distance, much to Sam's relief. He settled into the dimness, listening to Verdi piped softly over hidden loudspeakers, and allowed himself to relax a little at last, luxuriating in a place that smelled of something besides antiseptics and sick people.
The waiter came by with a basket of bread, laid open the covering cloth to let the warm odor of garlic fill their nostrils. Al rattled off an order, not bothering to ask Sam what he wanted. Sam watched with something like horror as Al poured a small pool of extra-virgin olive oil in his butter plate and sprinkled pepper on it, dabbed the crusty hot bread in it and ate with a look of sheer bliss on his face. "Hey," Al said, once he opened his eyes again. "You butter your bread."
"That's pure cholesterol!"
"It is not," Al responded indignantly. "The lasagne, now, that might be. But not this." He sopped another piece, offered it to Sam.
Sam tried it, grimaced, and went back to his own, plain piece. It was good bread, even without butter. "I appreciate your doing all this, Al," he said hesitantly. "I mean, spending all that time and ... everything."
"I didn't spend all that time," Al corrected. "I went to Perliasca's banquet. I did stuff of my own. Hey, most of it was here in Washington anyway. Don't flatter yourself, buddy."
"Memorial. . . ?"
Al filled him in on the past few months, distancing himself even more from the image of Italian mother guarding sole offspring. Sam listened, absorbed. He hadn't paid much attention to current events while in the hospital,
"Okay," Al concluded. "That's what's been going on. Now that you're out of sickbay, can we have that discussion we were going to have back in June? What's this project about, anyway?"
Sam closed his eyes. "The project that's gone down the tubes by now, you mean? They've probably canceled the whole thing."
Al took a sip of Chianti. He had allowed himself a single glass, to celebrate, and was rationing even that. "I wouldn't bet on that. Tell me."
Taking a deep breath, Sam leaned forward. "It's a proposal out of Star Bright. You remember those equations I was working on?"
The waiter came then, with orders of lasagne and fettucine con polio sprinkled with pine nuts, and they changed the subject while the server fussed with plates. He left, and they resumed their conversation.
"Good grief, which equations?" Al said, digging in. He was no longer playing the role of buddy who was conveniently around when needed; it was an image that had never fitted him anyway. He was interested, intensely so. "You were always working on something."
"The computer, Al. The computer that canЧ" he whispered the wordsЧ"can trace time."
His companion froze for a moment. "I thought that was just a joke. That you were putting me on."
Sam shook his head. "I don't joke about things like that. I can do it, Al. I know I can. It's going to be a quantum leap forward in our understanding of time, of entropy, of artificial intelligence. It will use a new way of organizing reality. It's what we needed before Star Bright, why I couldn't get Star
Bright to work. I didn't realize it then, but we needed a computer that wasn't constrained by binary logic, by existing languages. We really needed the computer I always wanted to build anyway, one that can measure probability sets instead of just probabilities, one that can work the way the human brain works. It's important, Al." His voice was low, intense. It made Al draw back.
"No computer can see the past," his companion muttered, stabbing a scrap of pasta. "Parallel processing won't do it. It can't be done."
"I can do it," Sam said. "If I can get the support. The funding. I can do it."
"You can do almost anything. If they don't go for this, there are lots of things you can do." "You don't believe me, do you?"
There was a long pause as Al scraped cheese to the center of his plate. Finally he capitulated. "I believe you can do anything you say you can. If you say you can build a computer that lets us see the past, the real past as it happensЧ" he sighedЧ"then you can do it, that's all. Even if it sounds crazy."
Sam heaved a sigh of relief. "I just don't understand why, that's all," Al added. Sam took another piece of bread, dipped it in the remains of the olive oil on the plate beside his friend, and bit into it without a hint of distaste. "Sometimes you just have to know what happened before to understand what's happening now," he said at last. "There's so much to explain." He took another bite. "I talked to the administrative people, but I'm not good at that. I need your help, Al. I can't do it without you."
Al looked at the bread, dripping yellow oil, and Sam, and his mouth twisted. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Sam put the bread aside. "Help me, Al." "So what d'you think I've been doing the last three months?" Al said, smirking. "I've got some contacts. There are meetings lined up...."
There was one more thing Sam Beckett had to do before leaving Washington, the same task he carried out every time he came in. Everything else was done. Al had come through in royal fashion, performing miracles and slaying dragons in the dungeons of bureaucracy, and somehow had found adequate funding and personnel for the next fiscal year. He could go to New Mexico and get started, taking the Star Bright site and going into Phase-I construction on his new project. It was going to be more than top secret, if there was such a thing; the government patrons of Project Quantum Leap probably had visions of military uses.
That wouldn't happen. It was his design, and they weren't going to be able to use it for military purposes. He was going to maintain control of this computer as no scientist had ever been able to maintain control before.
The air was beginning to cool with the first hint of autumn. He lifted his face to sniff the breeze, trying to smell something, anything past the pervasive odor of water and automobile exhaust. The cherry trees on the Mall were losing the rich green of their leaves. Soon the leaves would turn yellow and sere, loosening their grip on the branches, swirling in the wind like unheard answers. The sky was cloudy after weeks of relentless sunshine.
He spared a thought to the last time he'd stood alone outside a building in late afternoon, and glanced around. But
there were people around this time. He wasn't alone. He wasn't vulnerable. Not the same way he'd been before.
It was a long walk down the Mall, past the museums and the monuments, the slowly trolling tourist cars, across Seventeenth Street, on the grass between the Reflecting Pool and the lake. Long familiarity with the path told him that the route he followed took quite a while. He could have driven, or taken a cab.
He always walked. It was a way of delaying things, he supposed, when he allowed himself to think about what he was doing, where he was going. He tried not to think; he occupied his mind instead in reviewing the equations, the drawings, the plans. It was a source of intense frustration that he could see it all, there, complete in his mind, and yet he was going to have to wait for concrete and silicon and paperЧand, yes, other peopleЧto catch up to him.
It had always been that way. He'd learned early, so early, not to show impatience with other people. The high school teachers, trying to teach him how to do the calculus he'd been doing since he was five. The music teachers, giving him tips on how to remember long pieces when he'd seen them once and could recall them ever after, like a sharp, clear photograph in front of him.
And the other kids, who thought he was showing off, being teacher's pet because he couldn't help knowing the right answer every time. He'd learned, finally, not to have all the answers all the time. But it was still hard to talk to other people. It would always be hard, he supposed, even if he couldn't understand why he couldn't quite seem to connect. He couldn't with his father, finally. He couldn't with Donna.
Sometimes, even with the IQ of a certified genius and six doctorates, fluency in seven modern languages and four dead ones, "that's the way things are" was the best he could do for an explanation.
It wasn't enough.
He could see his destination now. It was deceptive, from this angle, looking as if it were farther away than it really was.
The main processing chips would be different, really different. They wouldn't even look like normal chips. He'd use a diamond substrate. There were still some problems, though. He'd have to think it through. If the cultures were still working ...
He hugged the blue box closer to himself. It was never out of his sight, out of his reach. It was the key. Slender cylinders in liquid nitrogen, holding pinkness and rare earths. Holding gray cells.
Conventional wisdom said that what he had planned couldn't be done, that it was flatly impossible. Maybe it was; he hadn't had a chance to examine the cultures yet. Something could have gone wrong. If it had, he wasn't sure what he would do; he'd never have a chance like this one againЧhe hoped.
He was only a stone's throw from the Potomac river now, walking through Constitution Gardens.
A few other people were scattered here and there, not paying any attention to him. He passed one woman of his own age or a little older, holding a fistful of daisies and crying softly, standing in the middle of a patch of grass. Normally he would have stopped, gone over to her and asked her what was the matter, how could he help. Here, he knew what the matter was. He knew that nothing could help. Nothing could change things. Not here.