"Larry Niven - The Return of William Proxmire UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

Through the peephole in Andrew’s front door the man made a startling sight.
He looked to be in his eighties. He was breathing hard and streaming sweat. He seemed slightly more real than most men: photogenic as hell, tall and lean, with stringy muscles and no potbelly, running shoes and a day pack and a blue windbreaker, and an open smile. The face was familiar, but from where?
Andrew opened the front door but left the screen door locked. “Hello?”
“Dr. Andrew Minsky?”
“Yes.” Memory clicked. “William Proxmire, big as life.”
The ex-senator smiled acknowledgment. “I’ve only just finished reading about you in the Tribune, Dr. Minsky. May I come in?”
It had never been Andrew Minsky’s ambition to invite William Proxmire into his home. Still—”Sure. Come in, sit down, have some coffee. Or do your stretches.” Andrew was a runner himself when he could find the time.
“Thank you.”
Andrew left him on the rug with one knee pulled against his chest. From the kitchen he called, “I never in my life expected to meet you face to face. You must have seen the article on me and Tipler and Penrose?”
“Yes. I’m prepared to learn that the media got it all wrong.”
“I bet you are. Any politician would. Well, the Tribune implied that what we’ve got is a time machine. Of course we don’t. We’ve got a schematic based on a theory. Then again, it’s the new improved version. It doesn’t involve an infinitely long cylinder that you’d have to make out of neutronium—”
“Good. What would it cost?”
Andrew Minsky sighed. Had the politician even recognized the reference? He said, “Oh . . . hard to say.” He picked up two cups and the coffeepot and went back in. “Is that it? You came looking for a time machine?”
The old man was sitting on the yellow rug with his legs spread wide apart and his fingers grasping his right foot. He released, folded his legs heel to heel, touched forehead to toes, held, then stood up with a sound like popcorn popping. He said, “Close enough. How much would it cost?”
“Depends on what you’re after. If you—”
“I can’t get you a grant if you can’t name a figure.”
Andrew set his cup down very carefully. He said, “No, of course not.,,
“I’m retired now, but people still owe me favors. I want a ride. One trip. What would it cost?”
Andrew hadn’t had enough coffee yet. He didn’t feel fully awake. “I have to think Out loud a little. Okay? Mass isn’t a problem. You can go as far back as you like if . . . mmm. Let’s say under sixty years. Cost might be twelve, thirteen million if you could also get us access to the proton-antiproton accelerator at Washburn University, or maybe CERN in Switzerland. Otherwise we’d have to build that too. By the way, you’re not expecting to get younger, are you?”
“I hadn’t thought about it.”
“Good. The theory depends on maneuverings between event points. You don’t ever go backward. Where and when, Senator?”
William Proxmire leaned forward with his hands clasped. “Picture this. A Navy officer walks the deck of a ship, coughing, late at night in the 1930s. Suddenly an arm snakes around his neck, a needle plunges into his buttocks—”
“The deck of a ship at sea?”
Proxmire nodded, grinning.
“You’re just having fun, aren’t you? Something to do while jogging, now that you’re retired.”
“Put it this way,” Proxmire said. “I read the article. It linked up with an old daydream of mine. I looked up your address. You were within easy running distance. I hope you don’t mind?”
Oddly enough, Andrew found he didn’t. Anything that happened before his morning coffee was recreation.
So dream a little. “Deck of a moving ship. I was going to say it’s ridiculous, but it isn’t. We’ll have to deal with much higher velocities. Any point on the Earth’s surface is spinning at up to half a mile per
second and circling the sun at eighteen miles per. In principle I think we could solve all of it with one stroke. We could scan one patch of deck, say, over a period of a few seconds, then integrate the record into the program. Do the same coming home.”
“You can do it?”
“Well, if we can’t solve that one we can’t do anything else, either. You’d be on a tight schedule, though. Senators what’s the purpose of the visit?”
“Have you ever had daydreams about a time machine and a scopesighted rifle?”
Andrew’s eyebrows went up. “Sure, what little boy hasn’t? Hitler, I suppose? For me it was always Lyndon Johnson. Senator, I do not commit murder under any circumstances.”
“A time machine and a scope-sighted rifle, and me,” William Proxmire said dreamily. “I get more anonymous letters than you’d believe, even now. They tell me that every space advocate daydreams about me and a time machine and a scope-sighted rifle. Well, I started daydreaming too, but my fantasy involves a time machine and a hypodermic full of antibiotics.”
Andrew laughed. “You’re plotting to do someone good behind his back?”
“Right.”
“Who?”
“Robert Anson Heinlein.”
All laughter dropped away. “Why?”
“It’s a good deed, isn’t it?”
“Sure. Why?”
“You know the name? Over the past forty years or so I’ve talked to a great many people in science and in the space program. I kept hearing the name Robert Heinlein. They were seduced into science because they read Heinlein at age twelve. These were the people I found hard to deal with. No grasp of reality. Fanatics.”
Andrew suspected that the senator had met more of these than he realized. Heinlein spun off ideas at a terrific rate. Other writers picked them up . . . along with a distrust for arrogance combined with stupidity or ignorance, particularly in politicians.
“Well, Heinlein’s literary career began after he left the Navy because of lung disease.”
“You’re trying to destroy the space program.”
“Will you help?”
Andrew was about to tell him to go to hell. He didn’t. “I’m still talking. Why do you want to destroy the space program?”
“I didn’t, at first. I was opposed to waste,” Proxmire said. “My colleagues, they’ll spend money on any pet project, as if there was a money tree out there somewhere—”
“Milk price supports,” Andrew said gently. For several decades now, the great state of Wisconsin had taken tax money from the other states so that the price they paid for milk would stay up.
Proxmire’s lips twitched. “Without milk price supports, there would be places where families with children can’t buy milk.”