"Paul Preuss - Human Error" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

of them stood in silence a few seconds, and then Rodney Murch started absentmindedly scratching his
balls; all his slacks had a furry patch in the crotch from when he was thinking. By now the tip of Droege's
blunt nose had turned pale with envy. "Very suggestive, Toby," he said.

"Think it can do it again?" Tim Lassiter asked.

"Well, surely ifтАФ"

"Without coaching, I mean." Lassiter crossed his muscular forearms over an expanse of plaid
Pendleton shirt and tried to stare Toby down; a decade earlier he'd been a third-string wide
receiver on the Princeton football team, and he had the notion he was frightening to men like Toby who
were barely five and a half feet tall.

Murch kept thinking and scratching.

"Thanks, then," said Toby, irritated now and letting it show. "I'll call when I've something more
interesting." Like hell he would. He squeezed between his associates and rapped at the keyboard. The
screen went blank.

Slowly the three wandered back to their corners, avoiding each other's eyes, while Toby pondered
this fresh evidence that his repeated successes were beginning to upset the delicate emotional ecology of
the lab. Perhaps after all it was time to stop trying to be friends and start pressing the department
chairman for a larger wedge of the ARPA grant pie.

His fingers flew over the keys, restating the riddle's premise, repeating the question. This time the
machine ran a mere thirty seconds before displaying the answer: BECAUSE SHE WAS A LITTLE
MORE ON.

Take that, Lassiter. But what's this "she"? Is the machine exhibiting nonsexist tendencies, or is it
waffling?

He returned to his daydreams. Face the truth, old fellow, a Cray is not a serious optionтАФfifteen
million dollars or so, and that's merely the hardwareтАФbut if you could just get the little VAX wholly to
yourself . . .

This time his thoughts were interrupted by his name shouted from the hall: "Bridgeman!"

He stared at the apparition in the doorway, a wild-eyed, disheveled creature, far taller even than
Tim Lassiter. For an instant Toby took him for some sort of violent protester come to bomb their
defense-supported researchтАФthis was the University of California at Berkeley, after all, and old ways
die hard.

Toby sat motionless as the man loped across the length of the cluttered room; his skinny body was
draped in rags, his knobby head was crowned with blond hair resembling a Brillo pad, and his
faceтАФbig-nosed, big-lipped, beetle-browedтАФwas a mass of freckles. "You get any work done on this
bag-biting piece of shit?" the man yelled at him, fleering at Toby's fingerprint-smeared terminal and the
decrepit VAX (was it really wheezing?) beyond the windows.

"I say, who the hell are you?" Toby sputtered. Idiotic thing to say. Don't antagonize him. Toby was
conscious of his ears glowing red, of the others staring at him.