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

"She's great at phoning, full of enthusiasm, to tell me how bad things are. She
says she's doing her best." I dropped into a chair. "Damn Bierley for dying."
And for taking us with him, I thought. Didn't those bastards in Washington
understand what the stakes were here? This wasn't basic science that you could
throw away when budgets were tight. This was life and death!

Tick, tick, tick.

My life. My death!

Richardson said, "How desperate are we?"

"Plenty."

"Good." Richardson smiled. "I have a desperation play."

We played it close to the edge. Our funding was cut in a House vote, saved by
the Senate, and lost again in conference committee. Two weeks later, we also
lost an accountant who said he wouldn't go to jail for us, but by then we had
figured out that the best way to float digital requisition forms and kite
electronic funds transfers was with TOS. We couldn't stay ahead of the numbers
forever, but TOS, with near-human guile and digital speed, bought us an extra
week or two while the team from Hollywood installed the new imaging hardware.

The technicians and research assistants kept TOS busy with new data to absorb,
to think about, and I worked to add "rooms" to the multi-cameral memory, trying
to give TOS the ability to suppress the information hurricanes that still shut
us down at unpredictable intervals. The first rooms had each been devoted to a
specific function -- sensory processing, pattern recognition, memory sorting --
but these new ones were basically just memory modules. Meanwhile, Richardson
paraded people who had known Bierley through the I/O room for interviews with
TOS.

The day of the press conference, I deflected half a dozen calls from the
Government Accounting Office. Even as the first reporters were filing into our
press room, I kept expecting some suits and crewcuts to barge in, flash badges,
and say, "FBI."

I also worried about hurricanes, but TOS's storm warning lights stayed off all
morning, and the only surprise of the press conference was the one Richardson
and I had planned. While stragglers were still filing into the room --
security-screening and bomb-sniffing that many people took some time -- the
video behind the podium flicked on.

"Bierley, regrettably, is dead," said Bierley's image. He was responding to the
first question after his prepared statement. "There's no bringing him back, and
I regret that." Warm smile.

The press corps laughed uncertainly.