"Robert Grossbach - Of Scorned Women and Causal Loops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grossbach Robert)

“That would be fine, yes,” said Lagrange.

They exited the building by a rear door, emerged into bright sunlight.
Almost immediately, he tripped over a raised section of concrete walkway,
winced as he regained his balance.

“Are you okay?” She reached out to steady his arm and momentarily,
quite against his will, he became aroused.

How pathetic, he thought, that the mere incidental touch of a woman
could do that to him. “I’m fine,” he said. “I strained a hamstring while I was
jogging the other day. A warning from nature, I suppose, to stop trying to
interfere with her course.”

“Now you sound like Giorgio.”

“Really? In what way?”
 “He was always talking about death. Well, alluding to it, anyway. That
is, when he wasn’t talking about physics. He seemed to feel he was racing
against a time-table. He wanted to get the Nobel while he could appreciate
it.”

They entered a narrow two-story building that connected at an odd
angle to two other identical structures.

“He was disappointed he didn’t get it for the Higgs. . .”

“You know about the Higgs?”

They walked down an asbestos-tiled corridor. “Not much. I know it’s
the name given to fields of some sort and also to the particles that
presumably transmit them. Higgs bosons, I believe they’re called. Goldman
found the first one right here and got the prize —when was it? —about
fifteen years ago.”

“Two thousand three,” she said. “Giorgio felt it should’ve been his.”

They entered a small cantina. Candy and Coke machines on one wall.
Ten tables and chairs. Microwave oven. Coffee stand.

“This okay?” she asked.

“Anything,” he said. “As long as I don’t have to hear those
generators.” They sat at one of the tables, and she brought over some cafe
au lait. He sipped at the Styrofoam cup. “So Giorgio was bitter.”

“Oh, of course,” she said quickly. “Isn’t that de rigueur for world-class
physicists who feel they’re being overlooked? Bitter, driven, obsessed,
callous” —her voice deepened, her gaze drifted off — “manipulative, cold,