"Robert A. Metzger - Picoverse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Metzger Robert)

teachers in the last eight months.

Sure.

The silk-suited son of a bitch hadn’t seen Anthony in more than two weeks. And there was no way that
he’d leave campus this morning. When Anthony had been born, Horst had cancelled trips, meetings, and
conferences to be with them, spending an entire month at home. But the fame that Horst’s research had
brought him, and the pressure to perform at an ever higher level, had destroyed that gentle Horst, and
eventually their marriage. Katie checked the virtual clock hanging in front of her nose. The Sonomak
would be put through its paces in less than three hours. She knew that nothing would get that egomaniac
off campus today.

“Did I do a bad thing?” asked Anthony.

Katie refocused again. Anthony had backed away from the now-sobbing Miss Alice. His chin quivered,
his eyes had grown large, and with his right hand he clenched a fistful of his sandy-blond hair, twirling a
lock of it with his index finger. Tears began to run from the outside corners of his eyes. “Iwas bad,
Mama!”

Katie was up, hopped from the platform, and started to run for the stairwell. “It was just an accident,
baby. Don’t worry, I’m coming right home,” she said as she descended the stairwell, taking two steps at
a time. “Everything will be all right.”



The senator lookedat the professor. The professor was big, probably topping 220 pounds, and looked
powerful even on screen. His ink-black hair was slicked straight back across a head so big and square
that it looked chiseled from a block of wood. His pencil thin mustache looked painted on.

The senator tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it.

Dr. Horst Wittkowski smiled back, instantly understanding what the look on Ty Miller’s face meant.Bad
news . Of that he had absolutely no doubt. The only question was how bad it would be. He slowed his
breathing, lifted his hands from his lap and placed them atop the cool lacquered perfection of his
mahogany desk. He leaned forward, pursed his lips ever so slightly to denote concern, and then angled
his head to the left as he furrowed his brow, the expression and body language precisely engineered to
solicit details.

Senator Ty Miller felt the thin sheet of sweat across his forehead begin to bead up, and a muscle in the
left side of his face, just at the base of his jaw, ticking as sure and steady as his pocket watch. He did not
like to deliver bad news—it made him nervous. His career had been built on the twin political pillars of
filling up the pork barrel and slapping the backs of countless good ol’ boys. Nothing good came from
delivering bad news.

“The news, Senator?” asked Horst, his voice deep and resonant, the German accent polished to a high
luster.
 Senator Miller swallowed hard. “The president has decided to fund theInternational Thermonuclear
Experimental Reactor ,” he said, and then slipped back in his chair, bracing himself for the explosion
that he was sure would come, as the significance of what he’d told Wittkowski hammered home.