"John Varley - Mammoth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

At Clear Lake he launched his canoe and paddled out to the middle of the lovely little body of
water. He opened his laptop and lowered a thermometer into the water, consulted a dandy little
handheld weather station from the Oregon Scientific Company, and entered all the resulting data into
his computer. The result immediately appeared on the screen: lure 14. He removed that lure—a gaudy
one with two long red feathers and a bit of Christmas tree tinsel, one of his favorites—from the tackle
box and tied it to the end of the clear nylon line, and prepared to make his first cast.

He figured that, if he did catch a trout, it would have cost him no more than a few thousand
dollars per pound. But that wasn't the point, was it? He was doing this to relax, and he had to admit,
just rowing out to the center of the lake was relaxing. Matt was a city boy, not used to such silence, to
trees so green and thick, to the sweet smell of the mountain air.

He waved the line back and forth over his head as he'd seen casters do in one of the videos he
studied, letting out more and more line. Then he cast it out before him.

The hook caught in the shoulder of his REI canvas fisherman's vest, barely missing his ear. The
length of line he'd carefully paid out fell down all around him, like spider silk.

"Story of my life," he muttered. "Great on theory, poor on execution."

He was still trying to untangle himself when he heard the sound of an approaching helicopter. He
waited while the noisy machine turned abruptly and hovered over the middle of the lake. He could just
make out someone in the back looking at him through a big pair of binoculars. Then the chopper flew
off to the east, toward where Matt knew there was a clearing large enough for a helicopter to land.
He stowed his rod and reel and started paddling for shore.

The helicopter's engine had died by the time he reached shore, and as he pulled the boat up on
the sand, a large, balding, powerfully built man in an expensive-looking gray suit was picking his way
through the low shrubs and patches of mud that surrounded the shallow lake. Matt started toward
him, indifferent to the mud on his L.L. Bean heavy-duty fishing boots.

"You must be the guy I talked to on the phone, Mr. Warburton," Matt said. "And I'm still not
interested."
 "Be that as it may," the man said, stopping a few yards from Matt, "I have to make my pitch.
You hung up on me."

"Then pitch. I can give you five minutes. As you can see, I'm pretty busy."

Warburton looked momentarily confused. Then he shrugged it off.

"I spoke to some of your colleagues at the university, and it seems you're not that interested in
money. You already have your full professorship. So it's a problem, since everybody I ask about
finding the top man in the country concerning the physics of time immediately tells me it's Matthew
Wright. No second place."

"Then you do have a problem," Matt said.

"I am prepared to offer you your own private lab with a research budget of ten million dollars
yearly. No more faculty committees to satisfy, no pressure to publish, no agenda, no hindrance at all