"Jules Verne - In the Year 2889 (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Verne Jules)

longer than anticipated. It is four o'clock when he returns home, just in time
for the daily audience he grants to callers.
One readily understands how a man in Smith's situation must be beset with
requests of all kinds. Now it is an inventor needing capital; then it is some
visionary who comes to advocate a brilliant scheme which must surely yield
millions in profits. A choice must be made between these projects, rejecting the
worthless, examining the questionable, accepting the meritorious. To this work
Mr. Smith devotes two full hours a day.
The callers are fewer today than usual--just 12. Of these, eight have only
impracticable schemes to propose. In fact, one of them wants to revive painting,
an art fallen into desuetude owing to the progress made in color photography.
Another, a physician, boasts that he has discovered a cure for nasal catarrh!
These impracticalities are dismissed in short order. Of the four projects
favorably received, the first is that of a young man whose broad forehead
betokens his intellectual power.
"Sir, I am a chemist," he begins, "and as such I come to you."
"Well!"
"Once the elementary bodies," says the young chemist, "were held to be 62 in
number; a century ago they were reduced to 10; now only three remain
irresolvable, as you are aware."
"Yes, yes."
"Well, sir, these also I will show to be composite. In a few months, a few
weeks, I shall have succeeded in solving the problem. Indeed, it may take only a
few days."
"And then?"
"Then, sir, I shall simply have determined the absolute. All I want is money
enough to carry my research to a successful conclusion."
"Very well," says Mr. Smith. "And what will be the practical outcome of your
discovery?"
"The practical outcome? Why, that we shall be able to produce easily all bodies
whatever--stone, wood, metal, fibers--"
"And flesh and blood?" interrupts Mr. Smith. "Do you pretend that you expect to
manufacture a human being out and out?"
"Why not?"
Mr. Smith advances $100,000 to the young chemist, and engages his services for
the Earth Chronicle laboratory.
The second of the four successful applicants, starting from experiments made so
long ago as the 19th century and again and again repeated, has conceived the
idea of moving an entire city all at once from one place to another. His
particular interest is the city of Granton, situated, as everyone knows, some 15
miles inland. He proposes transporting the city on rails, turning it into a
beachfront resort. The profit, of course, would be enormous. Mr. Smith,
captivated by the scheme, buys a half-interest in it.
"As you are aware, sir," begins applicant No. 3, "by the aid of our solar and
terrestrial accumulators and transformers, we are able to make all the seasons
the same. I propose to do something better still. Transform into heat a portion
of the surplus energy at our disposal; send this heat to the poles; then the
polar regions, relived of their snowcaps, will become a vast territory available
for man's use. What think you of the scheme?"
"Leave your plans with me, and come back in a week. I will have them examined in