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

A computer that could send Sam Beckett into the past, to see and understand what really happened: when the Kennedys and King were shot, when Marilyn died, when all the mysteries happened. When Donna left him at the altar.
He got up and left the office, leaving the senators squabbling behind him, and wandered down the halls, thinking. It was one of the things he did best, and he stepped around a line of schoolchildren, not noticing when the teacher recognized him and spoke excitedly to her charges, not aware of the second glances and sharp looks from the people he passed. He'd been getting those looks ever since the Time cover. It made his mother proud, he supposed, but other than that it wasn't important.
He hadn't had a chance to do more than think since he'd given the final briefing on Project Star Bright. He wanted to work. He wanted to build that computer, to see his theories take shape. He'd been working on this since ... he couldn't remember when he'd started thinking about time as a string. He'd been watching television, he knew that. And he knew if he really tried to remember, he would.
Often enough he didn't bother to try to remember. It was I too easy, for one thing. And for another it made him feel a little more like a normal person.
He was not a normal person.
He wanted to build that computer.
He wanted to walk into the past and find out what went wrong, and fix it.
Once he understood the past, he could go back to Star Bright and deal with the future. First time, then space.
Unfortunately, in order to do all that he had to deal with I politicians and money people and others who wanted concrete I results, right now, so the world could beat a path to their [ doors. Not one of them could appreciate the sheer fun of I scientific research.
He wandered out of the building and down the marble I steps and up the street, ignoring the traffic and noise and | humid haze of a Washington afternoon. He could have been 1 anywhere. It didn't matter. He was lost in the calculations, the I theory.
A message was waiting for him when he got back to the hotel that night, after a late dinner and a show. It hadn't been I difficult to get a single ticket to the Performing Arts Center. It I usually wasn't. He always tried to attend at least one concert, one musical when he was on the East Coast; it was his private reward for having to be there at all. He checked at the desk when he came in, hoping forlornly that perhaps Dreasney, at I least, had had a change of heart and that all was not yet lost. [
The message was from Al. He grinned in delight, and practically ran to the elevators. He fumbled for the key to his room, slid it into the door, and lunged for the phone.
He'd already dialed before the familiarity of the area code I registered, so when the phone was picked up on the other end I his first words were, "What the heck are you doing in New I Mexico?"
"Hello to you too," came the familiar, raspy voice. "I'm recovering from a gunshot wound. How's your day been?"
"You what?"
And then there were explanations and amazement and recriminations and laughter, and two old friends trading stories and recent events.
"What are you doing anyway?" Sam said at last. "Were you out at the Labs? I wish I'd knownЧI was going through there just a couple of days ago."
"Two days ago I was doped to the gills in a hospital," Al growled, exaggerating only slightly for the sympathy effect. "Where were you?"
Sam took a deep breath. "I was out at the project." What I hope will be the project, he amended mentally.
"Ah?" Al was trying to pretend he was only casually interested. He wasn't succeeding. "This is the new deal you're working on? So, what's going on?"
"I can't talk about it over the phone," Sam said, belatedly remembering the limitations. "But listen, when are you going to be coming back to Washington?"
He could hear movement on the other end of the line, as if Al were shifting, a grunt and a sigh. Sam's nose wrinkled automatically at the memory of cigar smoke.
"I think I might want to stick around here for a few more days," Al said at last. "I'm probably going to go stay on the base, in Bachelor Officers' Quarters."
There was strain in his friend's voice, and he wanted to ask if Al was okay, but something told him the question wouldn't be welcome. Al was his closest friend, but he didn't confide much. If he'd been badly hurt, he'd joke about it. Saying he'd stay in New Mexico was tantamount to admitting he was in pain.
"Okay," he said. "That'll work too. I'm going to spend a couple more days here and then I'll be going back toЧ" He hesitated. He couldn't tell Al, not yet. And he certainly couldn't tell him over the telephone. "I'll be in New Mexico. So stick around, and I'll take you to Sadie's or the Sanitary Tortilla Factory for dinner."
"Deal," Al said. "Let me give you the base locator number."
Information exchanged, Sam hung up, a smile beginning to spread across his face as he considered the possibilities. Al Calavicci, in New Mexico. Right on the verge of retirement Ч
he'd be looking for something to do with himself. And Sam had something in mind. Sam Beckett needed a shark for the Washington waters, and nobody fit the bill better than Al Calavicci.
"Oh boy oh boy oh boy!" he crowed, delighted.

CHAPTER
THREE

The next day Sam headed for the Library of Congress to spend a few hours checking out the latest journal articles. Afterward he had lunch with colleagues also visiting the capital in the endless quest for government funding, and gently turned down an invitation to come join them at their various institutions of research and/or higher learning.
"What's the matter, you going to Los Alamos?" one, a bearded, slight man who stooped even sitting down, asked.
Sam grinned and shook his head. "Nope. Got some other irons in the fire."
"Like what?" another man wanted to know, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
When he wouldn't say more, the bearded man traded knowing glances with his two friends. Refusal to talk about work in public meant secrets, and not just industrial secrets, either.
The third man, the only one at the table not wearing a tie, changed the subject immediately. "So, Sam, how d'you like being the patron saint of the Nonluddites?"
"The what of the who?" As a subject-changing tactic, it worked beautifully. Sam set aside the fork with which he'd been digging into his salmon and took a long swallow of coffee. He'd better get funding soon, he thought irrelevantly. He'd have to bring his own lunches otherwise.
"The Nonluddites. That technology-no-matter-what bunch." The bearded man stabbed at a lettuce leaf. "Just when DOE is making our lives miserable with the Tiger Teams looking for safety and environmental problems, this group pops up and starts proclaiming the gospel of Build that Computer, Kill that Spotted Owl."
"I'm all for the Build that Computer end of it," his bespectacled compatriot smiled. The others, including Sam, nodded enthusiastically. "But you'd think they could give the bird a break. It's the visible symbol of the ecosystemЧ"
"Okay, Shelby, enough already about the ecosystem," the bearded man interrupted. "He was lecturing to us all the way out here about the damned ecosystem," he informed Sam.
"Sam knows what I mean," Shelby protested.
'The point is, these Nonluddites don't. They think more machines, more factories, more industry, more jobs. They don't think it through." The bearded man was visibly angry.
"They don't need to think it through," the man without a tie said. He was the only one who didn't have a meeting with a politician that day, and could afford to go casual. His name was Yen Hsuieh-lung, and rumor had it that he was the next | candidate the Nobel committee had had in mind the year Sam Beckett won the Prize. "Why should they? The thinking has been done. Anyone with the eyes to read an economic forecast can see they're right."
This evoked an immediate storm of protest from Shelby I and the bearded man, whose name was Whitsunder. Sam sat and listened until other diners started staring pointedly in the direction of the debate, and then raised his hand. "How about we all calm down and listen to what Hsuieh-lung has to say?" he said gently. "Or at least calm down?"
"Thank you, Sam," Hsuieh-lung said politely. Whitsunder I and Shelby grumbled, but shut up.
"The Nonluddites are regrettably extreme, it's true," he went on. "But one must admit that they are correct in that a pristine old-growth forest provides comparatively far fewer jobs and far less to the nation's wealth than the same land converted to factory production of, let us say, computer chips." He nodded to Sam. "Their support would have been useful when we worked on Star Bright."
"I'd rather drink from the stream running through that old-growth forest than from a stream into which the waste from that factory had been discharged," Shelby said.