"Ian Watson - Caucus Winter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

As we were sliding back over the big bridge, with the fifteen-story bulk of the
hotel blessedly in sight, she remarked that the name of the lower lake meant
"Holy Lake," but the upper lake was named after a mysterious poisonous red
flower.

"A flower from folklore, Anne!"

Thus did downtown Tampere bisect good and evil. Thus did my upcoming few hours
of sleep form a watershed between happiness and horror.

THE PHONE RANG. Six-fifteen A.M., claimed the display on the bedside clock. My
head seemed to have gone for a swim.

It was the American Ambassador herself, calling from Helsinki. Evangeline
Carlson. The Secret Service had contacted her by shortwave radio to say that I
was here.

They had radioed her rather than phoning?

The disaster had begun a day earlier, with an attack on Motorola's research
division in Phoenix.

"Motorola had a functioning, um...quantum computer," said Evangeline Carlson. "I
don't actually know what this means. What sort of computer it is."

"I do," I moaned into the mouthpiece. Motorola had been busy with optical
cavities -- magic with mirrors.

Presumably a prototype was still being put through its paces. Hence, no hint of
an announcement as yet.

"A militia coalition calling themselves the Caucus stole the computer. CAUC-US."
Ambassador Carlson pronounced the two syllables separately. "Caucasian-USA.
White America. Free from blacks and Jews and Hispanics and degenerates." The
bitter contempt in her voice.

"They must have had an insider working for them at Motorola." I was quite
pleased that I managed to frame such a lucid sentence.

"I don't know anything about that, Dr. Matthews. Information's almost
nonexistent. We're cut off apart from shortwave radio --"

I listened numbly, stunned by the speed and thoroughness of what had happened. I
should have switched on the light and jotted notes, but my head was still afloat
in beer and ammonium chloride.
The Caucus had spirited that prototype quantum computer away, probably to
elsewhere in Arizona, because late last night, Finnish time, the super-fast
hacking had already begun. Not just one stream of hacking, but many.