"Richard Powers - The Gold Bug Variations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Powers Richard)

strikes, expeditions, inventions, air disasters,
revolutions, epochally indecisive battles,
world-shaking books, commercial upheavals,
pogroms, putsches, treaties. A few sources
provide enough grist for every day of the
solar mill for years to come. If I'd ever run
out, the human activity since I began
hunting would have carried me through at
least another year. I never fell back on
birthdates of famous people, cheating in my
book. I still have on file every Event I ever
posted. After five years, my selections blend
into a reference work in their own right.
Years after my first run-in with the
ex-scientist, putting together the stray
pieces, I can look up the particular notice
that caused the Franciscan of 4th Street to
break down and—against
character—address a perfect stranger. I
arrived at the library early enough one
September in '82 to pick, type, and post the
item within fifteen minutes of the branch
opening for business:

Today in History
September 26

In 1918, after four years of total war, the
Allies launch an offensive along the
Western Front that will break the
Hindenburg Line. Two weeks later, World
War I formally ends on the eleventh hour
of the eleventh day of the eleventh
month. The following year, touring the
U.S. to drum up support for the new
League of Nations, Wood-row Wilson
collapses with his first incapacitating
stroke. With him collapses any hope for
the League.

I have the provoking entry here in front of
me. As I pinned it to the board, a hand
chopped me on the clavicle. I fell back at the
capacitance, thinking that someone had
stuck me with a knife. I now know that the
man had gone so long without touching
that his muscles had simply forgotten how
light a tap need be to attract attention. I
turned to see a figure shorter than average,
small-framed, with a beautiful, skeletal face