"Charles L. Harness-The Alchemist" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

"Maybe he is, but in this business, his kind of genius is not an asset, it's a disaster. What happens when
he explains something? Do you understand it? You do not. I don't understand it. Nobody understands it.
A few days ago he made the silamine process work for the first time. Four separate teams had already
given up. And how does he explain it?"
 "He just needed one seed molecule to initiate it," said Patrick. He added, quickly, "And don't ask me
where he got it."
"But I will ask you. Where did he get it-- a thing that had never before existed?"
Patrick shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"Maybe you're right," said Bleeker thoughtfully. "Perhaps we're not mentally equipped to understand
him. Perhaps we should examine our own capacity for comprehension of novel technology. It's like
Willard Gibbs and the phase rule. He published in 1876, but nobody in America was capable of
understanding him until Ostwald explained him in German. For a long time, if you couldn't read German,
you couldn't understand the phase rule. Is something like that happening here? Maybe we can't be
communicated with. Maybe we need to be examined. There are firms that do that, you know--
management evaluation firms... research evaluation firms."
Patrick nodded absently. "Suppose he has something the rest of us don't have-- but we just won't let
him use it. We don't know how to listen to him. We see him as a freak. Are we freaks to him?"
"But alkahest, Con, really. I suppose next we'll get a Project Proposal for making gold." He shook
his head. "All I remember about alchemy was my undergraduate course in History of Chemistry, at State
U. Frederick of Würtzburg reserved a place of distinction, a position of great elevation, for each and
every alchemist who visited the realm."
"What was that?" asked Patrick.
Bleeker said grimly: "The highest gallows in all Europe."
***


When Patrick had gone, Bleeker sat swiveling slowly at his desk for a long time. Was Sasanov right?
Maybe the lab was a little disorganized. Something was wrong, out-of-joint. Was it Celsus? The
administration?
Bleeker prided himself on knowing everything that went on in his laboratory. (He almost did know.)
He knew who was coming up with the ideas that might be commercial five or ten years from now. He
knew the misfit who would have to be reshuffled. But no matter how bad the incompatibility, in the past
his operations were big enough to find something which, if it did not completely match the talents of the
transferee, at least kept him at something useful to the company and to himself.
But now, for the first time in thirty years, he felt truly baffled. Sasanov, he suspected, would never
encounter this problem, or, if he did, it would be solved with prompt and drastic measures.
Bleeker chose a different way, gentler, but equally definitive.
He buzzed his secretary. "Miss Sally, get me Arnold Gruen, Gruen Associates," he said grimly.
***


Later, he explained it all to Patrick.
"Gruen Associates is unique in several respects. They're the oldest in the business, for one thing. For
another, right now they're the only management-survey group equipped to look at research labs, although
I dare say it's just a question of time before they lose that monopoly, what with so many billion dollars
being spent on research in this country every year."
"Gruen is unique, you were saying?" nudged Patrick gently.
"I was explaining that," said Bleeker testily. "Well, Gruen brought in another outfit to study them, show
them how they could tighten up their analysis techniques, rely on smaller samples, reduce study time and
the overall cost of their surveys. Sort of like a psychiatrist getting himself psychoanalyzed, so he'll be a