"Gardner Dozois - The Hanging Curve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dozois Gardner)

the Miracle itself, and what it might—or might not—signify. Hundreds of
conspiracy-oriented internet sites, of various degrees of lunacy, appeared almost
overnight. Apocalyptic religious cults sprang up almost as fast as wacko internet
sites. The Miracle was widely taken as a Sign that the Last Days were at hand, as
nearly anything out of the ordinary had been, from an earthquake to Jesus’s face on
a taco, for the last thousand years. Within days, some people in California had sold
their houses and all their worldly possessions and had begun walking barefoot
toward Philadelphia.
After the Gates-of-Armageddon-are-gaping-wide theory, the second most
popular theory, and the one with the most internet sites devoted to it, was that Aliens
had done it—although as nobody ever came up with an even remotely convincing
reason why aliens would want to do this, that theory tended to run out of gas early,
and never was as popular as the Apocalypse Now/Sign from the Lord theory. The
respectable press tended to ridicule both of these theories (as well as the Sinister
Government Conspiracy theory, a dark horse, but popular in places like Montana
and Utah)—still, it was hard for even the most determined skeptic to deny that
something was going on that no one could even begin to explain, something that
defied the laws of physics as we thought we knew them, and more than one scientist,
press-ganged into appearing on late-night talk shows or other Talking Head venues,
burbled that if we could learn to understand the strange cosmic forces, whatever
they were, that were making the Ball act as it was acting, whole new sciences would
open up, and Mankind’s technological expertise could be advanced a thousand
years.
Up until this point, the government had been ignoring the whole thing,
obviously not taking it seriously, but now, perhaps jolted into action by watching
scientists on The Tonight Show enthuse about the wondrous new technologies that
might be there for the taking, they made up for lost time (and gave a boost to the
Sinister Government Conspiracy theory) by swooping down and seizing
Independence Stadium, excluding all civilians from the property.
The city and the owners protested, then threatened to sue, but the feds
smacked them with Eminent Domain and stood pat (eventually they would be
placated by the offer to build a new stadium elsewhere in the city, at government
expense; since you certainly couldn’t play a game in Independence Stadium anyway,
with that thing hanging in the air, the owners were not really all that hard to
convince). Hordes of scientists and spooks from various alphabet-soup agencies
swarmed over the playing field. A ring of soldiers surrounded the stadium day and
night, military helicopters hovered constantly overhead to keep other helicopters with
prying television cameras away, and when it occurred to somebody that this
wouldn’t be enough to frustrate spy satellites or high-flying spy planes, a huge tent
enclosure was raised over the entire infield, hiding the Ball from sight.
Months went by, then years. No news about the Miracle Baseball was coming
out of Independence Stadium, although by now a tent city had been raised in the
surrounding parking lots to house the influx of government-employed scientists, who
were kept in strict isolation. Occasionally, a fuss would be made in the media or a
motion would be raised in Congress in protest of such stringent secrecy, but the
government was keeping the lid down tight, in spite of wildfire rumors that scientists
were conferring with UFO Aliens in there, or had opened a dimensional gateway to
another universe.
The cultists, who had been refused admittance to Independence Stadium to
venerate the Ball, when they’d arrived with blistered and bleeding feet from