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

Al's protest alone might not have been enough to lure Sam out of the conversation, but the promise of music in addition managed it. The radio shut off with a decisive click, and I objections were quickly stilled when the partygoers saw what
was going on.
"Oh does he play the piano too?" Tina said, not in the least upset, it appeared, by having her conversation so rudely broken into. She took back the cup of punch and sipped at it, her lips soft and red and luscious against the plastic rim.
"To die for," Al assured her, his head still spinning, unable to look away. This might possibly, he thought with his last rational moments, be his best birthday party ever. Sam, bless him, was playing something slow and danceable. Al held his arms, and Tina came into them.

Chapter
TEN

Senator Judith Dreasney looked at the latest briefing book, a blue binder three inches thick, and sighed. She had a real interest in at least six bills coming up, and no interest at all in at least a dozen more. But in order to get the votes to get her farm bill passed, she had to support somebody else's appropriations bill, or memorial, or protection bill.
But voting for the protection bill would annoy somebody else who would otherwise support her. But if she didn't, she might lose on another front.
Politics was interesting, to put it mildly. Dreasney wondered just how badly her constituents wanted that farm bill. Badly enough to re-elect her? Because in the final analysis, the name of the game was Stay on the Hill. Not even to be KingЧjust to Stay.
"Jessie?" she yelled.
Her administrative assistant, a bouncy twenty-seven-year-old with a flip haircut, dancing blue eyes, and the largest nose this side of the Potomac, skidded in. "Yes'm, ma'am, bosslady, Senator?"
Dreasney eyed Jessie's outfit, a sunshine yellow shorts suit, and felt very old. "Jessie, dear, how do I feel about this?" She waved a hand at the briefing book.
"You think it's terrific, ma'am." Jessie lifted up on her toes and dropped again. Most offices on the Hill wouldn't have approved of shorts. Jessie managed to make it look like
up-to-the minute office wear, and anyone who took exception was obviously too conservative for words.
Dreasney was not a conservative, so she kept her critical thoughts to herself and thought longingly of the days when she had had the legs to wear something like that herself.
"Any land mines?" she asked, pulling herself back to business.
Jessie pouted a little. "Well, you might have some reservations about the environmental impact." "Am I an environmentalist this week?" "You're a middle-of-the-roader, wisely balancing the needs of the environment against the overwhelming national interest in technological progress," Jessie assured her. "It's in the summary. A one-paragraph vote speech."
"Will that make Bantham happy?" It was important to make Senator Ralph Bantham happy; their interests marched together, and they regularly traded votes. Right now, he had an edge. She owed him a favor. She'd rather he owned her one instead.
Jessie hesitatedЧnever a good sign. "Not entirely," she admitted. "But you've got to say something environmental soon, or you're going to lose that whole bloc. Scuttlebutt says that you're on the environmentals' long-list for targeting. They're watching you."
"Why don't they make me happy and target Bantham?" Dreasney groused, flipping the binder open. As promised, there it wasЧa one-paragraph speech adroitly covering both sides of the fence.
"Oh, they have. He's on their short list. But he's got the NRA and AARP behind him, and the Nons. He's golden." She came around the desk and dug through the papers to find yet another binder, this one much slimmer. "This one you vote for without any reservations at all. The environmentals will scream, so you can point to the vote speech on this other one. And you can make Bantham happy."
Making Bantham happy was high on the list of Jessie's priorities too, Dreasney concluded. She glanced at the younger
woman narrowly, wondering where Jessie's loyalties ultimately lay. If that wasn't a redundant thought in and of itself, of course.
"Will it line up the Nons for me?" she asked. Nons. She hated that nickname. It seemed so stupid. But they regularly delivered the contributions, and they did a lot of free publicity as long as she voted their way, so she guessed they could call themselves anything they wanted. It wasn't as if they were subversive, for God's sake.
"Well, it sure won't hurt. They understand about business, after all. They know they can't get their whole agenda through this session."
A new thought occurred to Dreasney. "Are you a Non, Jessie?"
"Me?" Jessie was startledЧor at least appeared to be startledЧat the very suggestion. She was blushing, a rush of color that suffused her entire face. "Oh, no, ma'am. I'm not political at all. I don't mind about spotted owls or logging either. I just like to watch, that's all."
Watch, and listen, and advise. Jessie was a chess player, after all -state junior champion. Dreasney had known her from infancyЧit had been in her courtroom, after all, that the adoption papers were signed. She'd followed Jessie's career through grade school, high school, and college, given her her first job as a campaign clerk. And yet, Judith Dreasney was sure that she didn't really know Jessie Olivera at all. She'd been awfully quick to deny belonging, yet she always seemed to manage to bring the conversation around to issues the Nonluddites had an interest in. Even in staff meetings, when the rest of Dreasney's aides and researchers gathered to advise her of the implications of particular bills and how to vote on the massive pieces of legislation, Jessie was always alert to the technological versus the environmental impacts, always wanted to pick up the rumors on how other Congressmen viewed things.
"What's their target for this session?" she asked. Jessie would know, of course. Jessie knew everything, and she was always right. Dreasney wondered how she managed it. Probably that same intent curiosity Dreasney had just been castigating her for. Dreasney sighed.
"Clean Air Act," Jessie responded promptly. "It's keeping a lot of companies from expanding, because they're putting so much money into trying to meet the standards. And the Open Ranges ActЧthey want to open up more public land to grazing."
"Oh," the senator responded, nonplussed. Jessie bustled around the office, getting papers in order, and the senator watched her.
Sometimes she felt very old and foolish and wondered why she was in Washington. All she wanted was a small farmers' subsidy to keep family farms of less than 160 acres alive. The Nons didn't like her bill, she knew that. Not efficient enough, they said. Not good for the economy. Survival of the fittest, Let the little farms wither if they couldn't compete; bigger was better, more productive. But the country was already throwing away tons of milk every year, had so much butter and cheese they couldn't give it away. And not all the small farmers were dairy fanners anyway; some of them specialized in odd things, like four-horned sheep or Velvet Roses apples, things you'd never find in the market.
Judith Dreasney once had thought that a sheep with four horns was something out of a fairy tale, or a science fiction story about radioactive mutants. She knew better now; she'd held a lamb, felt its warm squirming, seen its flock. She'd tasted the mellow wine of a Velvet Rose. And they were wonderful things, even if they were inefficient and antiquated, and she didn't want them or their kind to vanish.
That wasn't the kind of thing she said on the campaign trail, of course. They'd have played hell with her image of a hardboiled pol.
"Committee meeting Thursday," Jessie said, slanting a glance her way. "I'm afraid I don't have the briefing book for that meeting."
That meeting. That meeting was so secret even Jessie didn't know what it concerned. That meetingЧthe vote on that ProjectЧwas the reason, favors owed or not, that Ralph Bantham kept sweet. She and Bantham, between them, kept the money coming for that crazy project in the desert, and if she changed her mind, it would go belly-up. She didn't know why Bantham was so interested in it. A bigger and faster computer? All you had to do for one of those was wait a few months and buy it from the Japanese. There was this business about hybrid processors, but that was ridiculous on the face of it.
A lot of money was going for ridiculous, though. A lot of money. She could use some of that money for her four-horned sheep. And for schools. And for medical care, if the Great Health Care Package didn't go through.
And if John Beckett's boy could actually do what he said he could do, the implications were staggering. Not only going back to see historyЧdebunking all the conspiracy theories. That would be the merest side effect. The real power would be the ability to make a decision based on real, solid, firm, factual information about what other people had done. If you knew what kinds of decisions led to putting missiles in Cuba back in '62, you could have decided in complete confidence to implement a blockade, without spending money preparing for an attack, because you'd know the Russians had never planned one. Today, you could know the secret councils of Saddam Hussein, or the French. Politics would no longer be a game of poker for the country with the ability to look at the past and see it as it really was. Especially if no one else had the ability. If everyone else thought their secrets were inviolate, and didn't know an Observer might be watching over their shoulders.
If Sam Beckett could do what he said he could do.
Dreasney nodded, not saying anything. It annoyed Jessie to be left out of the loop like this, the senator knew, but that was too damned bad. Some things even Jessie couldn't know. There was secretЧand then there was Quantum Leap.
"I really hate this stuff," Sam muttered.
Al nodded. He was back in uniform for this, pulling out all the stops to impress. Congressional testimony, even in closed committee session, was sufficiently official, and it didn't hurt
to remind his audience just who he was and what he had done in his career for his country. That white uniform with its array of ribbons lent considerable credibility to a shy scientist with a brilliant idea.
"Just let me do the talking, okay? You'll just go in and everybody'll get old waiting for you to find exactly the right word for 'have a nice day.' " He tucked his hat under his arm and glanced up and down the hall. "Down here."
It wasn't a regular committee room. Too small, for one thing. A dozen or so people clustered at one end, but only two counted.
"Why?" Sam was protesting. "It's my Project. I understand
it best."
"That's the problem. You're the only one who understands it. You can't even explain it to me and make sense."