"Bruce Holland Rogers - Lifeboat On A Burning Sea" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

leaned back in his chair to look at it. When he put it down again, he still
hadn't answered.

The statue was a man dancing inside an arc of flames.

The next week, Bierley deserted us.

"Brain aneurism in his sleep," one of the old man's attorneys told me via video
link.

There had been no provision in Bierley's will to keep seed money coming. If he
went first, we were on our own. The attorney zapped me a copy of the will so I
could see for myself.

"Makes you think," the attorney said, "doesn't it?" He meant the sudden death. I
thought about that, of course. As strong as ever, I could hear my pulse in my
throat. Tick, tick, tick. But I was also thinking something else:

Bastard. Deserter.

He had left me to die.

Weeks later in the I/O room, I said to Richardson, "We're in trouble."

He and a technician had been fiddling with TOS's voice, and he said, "TOS, what
do you think of that?"

"I don't know what to think of it," said the machine voice. The tone was as
meaningfully modulated as any human voice, but there was still something
artificial about the sound -- too artificial, still, for press exposure. "I
don't know enough of what Dr. Maas means by 'trouble.' I'm unsure of just how
inclusive 'we' is intended to be."

"My bet," Richardson said, "is that he's going to say our project has funding
shortfalls up the yaya."

"Yaya?" said TOS.

"Wazoo," Richardson said.

"Oh." A pause. "I understand."

Richardson grinned at me. "English as she is spoke."

I waved off his joke. "There's talk of cutting our funding in Congress. I've
been calling the reps that were in Bierley's pocket, but I can't talk to these
people. Not like he could. And I sure as hell can't start a grass-roots ground
swell."

"How about that lobbyist we hired?"