"C. Sanford Lowe & G. David Nordley - The Small Pond" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lowe C Sanford)

David watched her sigh, knowing she needed to unload. He waited. Finally,
she began to talk.
“The captain has certain connections at Campbell. Those connections can
help or hurt me. He also has certain ... needs.”
David risked touching her shoulder. “There was a threat implied?”
She nodded, holding back a quiet anger.
“I understand this well. It is not the act that bothers you so much, but the
feeling that you have no choice in the act, am I right?”
She nodded.
Why, David wondered, should the artificial intelligence that really oversaw this
starship permit such a transparent abuse of its human master’s power? But he could
answer his own question; ultimately people had insisted on a person being in control.
He spoke. “You have an interesting problem. For instance, if we were to
present evidence to the second in command and demand that he take over, how
would we know that the second in command is not either complicit or otherwise
under the primary’s control?”
Avonford shook her head. “We don’t. What is the check on such people?”
“I think the threat of exposure would hold much weight with him,” David told
her. “He could find himself with nowhere in settled space to go. But to fight this
would not be without risk.”
“If it was just me,” she said, “I’d raise hell. But the whole human universe is
counting on me to get this job done!”
This seemed a little much to David, who took a longer view of things, but her
sincerity and enthusiasm were evident. He smiled and raised an eyebrow. “Is it that
important to study relativity? Why?”
“Look, if the Anderson, Lu, and Yoseph paper is right, we can use one
asteroid-sized black hole to make more.”
David shrugged. “And then what?”
Her eyes gleamed. “Look up Wheeler, Forward, Thornsen, and Zhau. With
several black holes, we can make some of the gravitational machines that the
relativity theorists predicted. For instance, imagine a gravitational catapult that would
send us up near the speed of light without our feeling any acceleration at all!
Imagine...”
 David held up a hand. He had his own doubts about what people might do
with the fruits of the project. But it was obviously so important to Elizabeth that she
was willing to be used for it. He was moved to concern.
“Look, we live forever these days. If there is a setback, it can be overcome in
time. Besides, who knows where the captain’s demands will stop? His behavior
must be changed, or many more women will experience what you have. I think you
must threaten to expose him. Then you will be in the driver’s seat.”
She raised her eyebrows. “It can’t be just my word against his, and we can’t
count on the ship’s AI.”
David smiled. “I do biological nanotech. I have in my room all I need for
bench-level fabrication. What we need to do is record an hour or so of conversation
with something too small and diffuse to be detected by all the usual precautions,
which I’m sure that he will take. So I make a distributed network of nanocells. I
could hide it under your skin, or in your hair.”
Liz looked at him, worry in her face, but with anger and excitement, too. She
nodded, not feeling powerless any longer.
****