"Bruce Sterling - Think of the Prestige" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

fire it, found ready markets in Egypt, Israel, Holland, Italy, Britain,
Canada, Venezuela, Chile, Thailand, Iran, South Africa, Austria and
Somalia.

Dr. Bull created a strange private reserve on the Canadian-
American border; a private arms manufactury with its own US and
Canadian customs units. This arrangement was very useful, since the
arms-export laws of the two countries differed, and SRC's military
products could be shipped-out over either national border at will. In
this distant enclave on the rural northern border of Vermont, the
arms genius built his own artillery range, his own telemetry towers
and launch-control buildings, his own radar tracking station,
workshops, and machine shops. At its height, the Space Research
Corporation employed over three hundred people at this site, and
boasted some $15 million worth of advanced equipment.

The downfall of HARP had left Bull disgusted with the
government-supported military-scientific establishment. He referred
to government researchers as "clowns" and "cocktail scientists," and
decided that his own future must lay in the vigorous world of free
enterprise. Instead of exploring the upper atmosphere, Bull
dedicated his ready intelligence to the refining of lethal munitions.
Bull would not sell to the Soviets or their client states, whom he
loathed; but he would sell to most anyone else. Bull's cannon are
credited with being of great help to Jonas Savimbi's UNITA war in
Angola; they were also extensively used by both sides in the Iran-Iraq
war.

Dr. Gerald V. Bull, Space Researcher, had become a
professional arms dealer. Dr. Bull was not a stellar success as an
arms dealer, because by all accounts he had no real head for business.
Like many engineers, Bull was obsessed not by entrepreneurial drive,
but by the exhilirating lure of technical achievement. The
atmosphere at Space Research Corporation was, by all accounts, very
collegial; Bull as professor, employees as cherished grad-students.
Bull's employees were fiercely loyal to him and felt that he was
brilliantly gifted and could accomplish anything.

SRC was never as great a commercial success as Bull's
technical genius merited. Bull stumbled badly in 1980. The Carter
Administration, annoyed by Bull's extensive deals with the South
African military, put Bull in prison for customs violation. This
punishment, rather than bringing Bull "to his senses," affected him
traumatically. He felt strongly that he had been singled out as a
political scapegoat to satisfy the hypocritical, left-leaning, anti-
apartheid bureaucrats in Washington. Bull spent seven months in an
American prison, reading extensively, and, incidentally, successfully
re-designing the prison's heating-plant. Nevertheless, the prison
experience left Bull embittered and cynical. While still in prison, Bull
was already accepting commercial approaches from the Communist