"Kim Stanley Robinson - Vinland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

questions that got right to the point, although they could
have been asked and answered just as well in Ottawa.
Yes, the professor explained, the fuel for the forge was
wood charcoal, the temperature had gotten to around
twelve hundred degrees Celsius, the process was direct
reduction of bog ore, obtaining about one kilogram of
iron for every five kilograms of slag. All was as it was in
other Norse forges--except that the limonites in the bog
ore had now been precisely identified by spectroscopic
analysis; and that analysis had revealed that the bog iron
smelted here had come from northern Quebec, near
Chicoutimi. The Norse explorers, who had supposedly
smelted the bog ore, could not have obtained it.
 There was a similar situation in the midden; rust
migrated in peat at a known rate, and so it could be
determined that the many iron rivets in the midden had
only been there a hundred and forty years, plus or minus
fifty.
"So," the minister said, in English with a
Francophone lilt. "You have proved your case, it
appears?"
The professor nodded wordlessly. The minister
watched him, and he couldn't help feeling that despite the
nature of the news he was giving her, she was somewhat
amused. By him? By his scientific terminology? By his
obvious (and growing) depression? He couldn't tell.
The minister raised her eyebrows. "L'Anse aux
Meadows, a hoax. Parcs Canada will not like it at all."
"No one will like it," the professor croaked.
"No," the minister said, looking at him. "I suppose
not. Particularly as this is part of a larger pattern, yes?"
The professor did not reply.
"The entire concept of Vinland," she said. "A hoax!"
The professor nodded glumly.
"I would not have believed it possible."
"No," the professor said. "But--" He waved a hand
at the low mounds around them-- "So it appears." He
shrugged. "The story has always rested on a very small
body of evidence. Three sagas, this site, a few
references in Scandinavian records, a few coins, a few
cairns. . . ." He shook his head. "Not much." He
picked up a chunk of dried peat from the ground,
crumbled it in his fingers.
Suddenly the minister laughed at him, then put her
hand to his upper arm. Her fingers were warm. "You
must remember it is not your fault."
He smiled wanly. "I suppose not." He liked the look
on her face; sympathetic as well as amused. She was
about his age, perhaps a bit older. An attractive and
sophisticated Quebecois. "I need a drink," he confessed.