"Kim Stanley Robinson - Forty Signs of Rain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

acumen had been gained on the job. Some people managed to do this successfully, others didnтАЩt, but all
tended to fall behind on the actual science being done, and had to take on faith what was really possible
in the labs. Certainly Derek could use some help in guiding policy at Torrey Pines Generique.

Frank went back to studying the grant proposal. There were elements of the algorithm missing, as was
typical. That was what the grant was for, to pay for the work that would finish the project. And some
people made a habit of describing crucial aspects of their work in general terms when at the prepub
stage, a matter of being cautious. So he could not be sure about it, but he could see the potential for a
very powerful method there. Earlier in the day he had thought he saw a way to plug one of the gaps that
Pierzinski had left, and if that worked as he thought it mightтАж

тАЬHmmmm,тАЭ he said to the empty room.

If the situation was still fluid when he went out to San Diego, he could perhaps set things up quite nicely.
There were some potential problems, of course. NSFтАЩs guidelines stated explicitly that although any
copyrights, patents, or project income belonged to the grant holder, NSF always kept a public-right use
for all grant-subsidized work. That would keep any big gains from being made by an individual or
company on a project like this, if it was awarded a grant. Purely private control could only be maintained
if there had not been any public money granted.

Also, the P.I. on the proposal was PierzinskiтАЩs advisor at Caltech, battening off the work of his students
in the usual way. Of course it was an exchangeтАФthe advisor gave the student credibility, a sort of license
to apply for a grant, by contributing his name and prestige to the project. The student provided the work,
sometimes all of it, sometimes just a portion of it. In this case, it looked to Frank like all of it.

Anyway, the grant proposal came from Caltech. Caltech and the P.I. would hold the rights to anything
the project made, along with NSF itself, even if Pierzinski moved afterward. So, if for instance an effort
was going to be made to bring Pierzinski to Torrey Pines Generique, it would be best if this particular
proposal were to fail. And if the algorithm worked and became patentable, then again, keeping control of
what it made would only be possible if the proposal were to fail.
 That line of thought made him feel jumpy. In fact he was on his feet, pacing out to the minibalcony and
back in again. Then he remembered he had been planning to go out to Great Falls anyway. He quickly
finished his cottage cheese, pulled his climbing kit out of the closet, changed clothes, and went back
down to his car.



The Great Falls of the Potomac was a complicated thing, a long tumble of whitewater falling down past a
few islands. The complexity of the falls was its main visual appeal, as it was no very great thing in terms of
total height, or even volume of water. Its roar was the biggest thing about it.

The spray it threw up seemed to consolidate and knock down the humidity, so that paradoxically it was
less humid here than elsewhere, although wet and mossy underfoot. Frank walked downstream along the
edge of the gorge. Below the falls the river re-collected itself and ran through a defile called Mather
Gorge, a ravine with a south wall so steep that climbers were drawn to it. One section called Carter
Rock was FrankтАЩs favorite. It was a simple matter to tie a rope to a top belay, usually a stout tree trunk
near the cliffтАЩs edge, and then rappel down the rope to the bottom and either free-climb up, or clip onto
the rope with an ascender and go through the hassles of self-belay.

One could climb in teams too, of course, and many did, but there were about as many singletons like