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

Sam smiled, looked at the image on the screen once more. "No, I can find my way."
Half an hour later, Al was glad Sam was so sure of himself. He knew he himself would be totally lost in this maze.
They were deep underground now, in an unfinished tunnel lit by naked fluorescent bulbs at twenty-foot intervals casting a cold, blue-white light on raw walls and poured-concrete floors. Al, almost trotting to keep up with his companion's longer stride, made a mental note to have the exposed wiring tucked away in tubing or something in case the safety inspectors descended into the depths of the Project and stopped everything with a list of environment/safety/health violations. The tunnel extended more than a hundred feet on either side of the elevator, and their footsteps echoed against the high walls. Feeder tunnels, all looking exactly alike, branched at irregular intervals, leading further into the Project. As they passed they caught occasional glimpses of men and women wearing hard hats and wearing heavy tool belts, using welding torches and hammers. No one passed them as they kept going down the hall, their footsteps echoing, blending with the sounds of construction.
Al wondered what it would be like if the power went out, and the emergency generators blew up, and he shuddered. Trapped, this deep in the earth? In this maze? In the dark?
He made another mental note: ladders. Lots and lots of ladders that people could climb to get to the surface. And emergency cabinets, too, with lots and lots of flashlights. And batteries. Mustn't forget batteries. Even if the area was going to be shut down.
And maps, too. Maybe Sam had the maze memorized, but mere mortals still got disoriented. Al made another note to tell the construction crew to paint the tunnels distinctive colors, and maybe put maps on the wall: You Are Here. The Way Out Is Over There.
The two men came to the end of the main tunnel. Sam veered right, into another unfinished hallway, and left again.
"Is this the right way?" Al asked nervously. In the completed part of the Project, one didn't feel quite so claustrophobic. Here, it was oppressively obvious they were deep under the ground.
"I want to go through the Central Complex. Just to see how it's coming along."
They entered a large, empty room. At one end, a ramp led up into a hole in the wall, through which another room could be seen. Thirty degrees along from it, another hole in the wall showed another hallway.
On the drawings, this was the Control Room. Here, within the next year or so, would be the central computer station for the mainframe being built all around them. As yet, it was still raw and undone, with holes in the walls and ceiling, where electrical connections would soon be. The place smelled of fresh paint; things were coming right along.
"So?" Al inquired. He wasn't quite impatient yet, but his tone made it clear that he was playing along.
"Up here. There's a way into the archive wing through here, if that drawing's up to date." Sam leaped up the ramp, into the Imaging Chamber. Al trudged after.
Sam had paused to look around and visualize what it would look like when it was finished. He always did that, every time he visited this place.
"So?" Al repeated, squinting up warily at the silver disk suspended from the ceiling, above a similar disk set in the floor. He wasn't quite clear about how this Accelerator business worked, but that silver thing looked like it would drop
on somebody's head any second. "That thing isn't connected up, is it?"
"What, that?" Sam barely spared it a glance. "Oh, no, that's Phase IIIЧHey, what's this?" He crossed the room in three long strides to a glossy panel propped against the drywall. "Come look at this."
"This" was a scrap of newspaper caught under the corner of the panel.
"Here, help me lift itЧcareful!"
Al lifted obediently, trying not to think about what it would cost to replace the panel if it slipped. It was part of the focusing mechanism, and had been sent back for rebuild to the original contractor at least four times. The cost of this opaque piece of... he wasn't sure just what the material was. .. nearly equaled the whole payroll of the Project for the past year. Sam was on his knees beside him, lending a steadying hand, as he slid the piece of paper free.
"Okay, you can set it down nowЧ"
Down, and propped against the wall again, with Al sighing in relief. He peered over Sam's arm, trying to see. "So, what is it?"
"It's an article about the Nonluddites. That meeting they had in Gallup last month." The paper was torn and creased, but still readable.
"Sam, the last time I looked it was a free country. Freedom of speech, remember? So somebody might be interested in a political action group. Big deal."
Sam bit his lip and looked at him. "It bothers me, Al. I don't know why."
It really did, Al could see. Sam was a passionate defender of freedom of speech, of association, of belief. But there was the slightest tremor in the piece of paper held in his hands.
"I don't like the idea that we might have Nonluddites in the Project."
"But why?" Al was thoroughly confused. "They wouldn't threaten anything here. They're so pro-technology, pro-progress, that if those bozos at the Department hadn't slapped that topmost secret label on us the Nonluddites would be our biggest fundraisers. And didn't they make it pretty clear, a couple of years ago, that they think you're the greatest thing since sliced bread? I'm just surprised we don't have more of them."
Sam shook his head, batting away the lock of hair that fell into his eyes. "I don't object to their support of technology, Al; it's just that they don't seem to have any respect for anything else. I just have a gut feeling that this could mean a lot of trouble, somehow."
Al rolled his eyes. "Again with the gut feelings?"
"They're lobbying for repeal of the Clean Air and Water Act on the grounds that it interferes with industrial development."
"Without getting into whether it does or not, Sam, what does it have to do with us? They're not a threat to the Project. That's the last thing they'd want to do, in fact."
Sam sighed, nervously folding the paper lengthwise once, twice, three times. "I don't know. I can't see somebody deliberately violating the regs to shut us down when they think we're the best thing that ever happened. But it bothers me, Al. It really bothers me."
"You want me to find out who it is?" Al said, ever practical. "I can do a little rousting. Once we find out who it is, we can get rid of him. Or her. Transfer them out, or something."
Horrified, Sam shook his head. "No! No, we can't do that. We can't get rid of somebody just for belonging to a weird group. And we don't even know if they belong. Maybe somebody just had this in his pocket, picked it up somewhere." He hesitated, shrugged. "Leave it, I guess. I'm not sure why it matters so much."
Al shrugged. "If you want. You're the one who brought it up."
Sam moved his head back and forth again, studying the folded paper. It gave him a chill, had ever since he first caught sight of it, stuck under the panel. It hadn't left his thoughts, and he wanted to talk to someone, show it to somebody, see if they got the same feeling of impending trouble. He'd hoped
the other man would feel the same frisson of dread. But Al hadn't. His reality check had failed. He could ask Verbeena, he supposed, butЧ
He shook his head again and shrugged. "Yeah. I know why, Al. It's just a feeling. A really bad feeling. Maybe it's nothing. And maybe we haven't heard the last of it, either."
Al snorted. "Feelings. Pfui. Let's go look at E wing."

Chapter
NINE

He fitted the goggles over his temples and inserted his hands into the gloves, reaching for the waldo controls inside the glove box. Even after years of practice, it took a long moment and eyes squeezed tightly shut to adjust to the jump in vision that the goggles gave him; the tweezers, tiny in the grip of the waldoes, far too small to be manipulated by human hands, looked huge and pitted and gross and far too close to his eyes.
The goggles gave him a headache almost immediately, pressing on nerves behind the orbital arches of his skull. He had long since learned to ignore the pain, concentrating on the square of diamond substrate and the cells he was working with. The step beyond logic was fuzzy logic, the step beyond that was inspiration....
The cells had remained alive. Had grown, however feebly, in the culture. But it wasn't going to be enough. The glove box contained perhaps fifty small petri dishes, each with a single chip holding anywhere from one to a dozen cells from the brain of Sam Beckett. He had added small quantities of cerium and praeseodymium to the culture medium to stimulate cell growth, and used them to "dope" the semiconductors to allow the neurons to be electronically interfaced with the diamond substrates of the chips. It had been the first of several breakthroughs.
Conventional wisdom said from the very beginning that he couldn't culture adult human brain cells, and he'd proved them wrong, but it wasn't going to be enough. And he couldn't try to reproduce the experiment without getting other people involved, and if anyone else found out what he was doingЧ what he had doneЧthe Ethics in Human Research people would shut down the Project so fast he'd never know what hit him.
The cell in the dish he was examining throbbed, quivered, axon looking for impulse.
He wasn't even sure how he had gotten the cells to begin with. Originally he'd used a computer simulation in place of animal cells, figuring he'd have to go through years of intermediate steps before he could get to what he really wanted, and yet here he was, using his own cells. Not any innocent volunteer's, but his own.