"Connie Willis - Bellweather" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

glimpse of light from the other side of his lab. A sheet of paper coated with barium platinocyanide was fluorescing, even
though it was shut off from the tube. Curious, he stuck his hand between the tube and the screen. And saw the shadow
bones of his hand.

Look at Galvani, who was studying the nervous systems of frogs when he discovered electrical currents. Or Mess
He wasn't looking for galaxies when he discovered them. He was looking for comets. He only mapped them because he
trying to get rid of a nuisance.

None of which makes Dr. Chin any the less deserving of the Niebnitz Grant's million-dollar endowment. It isn't
necessary to understand how something works to do it. Take driving. And starting fads. And falling in love.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes, how scientific discoveries come about. Usually the chain of events leading up
them, like that leading up to a fad, follows a course too convoluted and chaotic to follow. But I know exactly where one
started and who started it.

It was in October. Monday the second. Nine o'clock in the morning. I was in the stats lab at HiTek, struggling wit
box of clippings on hair-bobbing. I'm Sandra Foster, by the way, and I work in R&D at HiTek. I had spent all weekend
going through yellowed newspapers and 1920s copies of The Saturday Evening Post and The Delineator, trudging
upstream to the beginnings of the fad of hair-bobbing, looking for what had caused every woman in America to suddenl
chop off her "crowning glory," despite social pressure, threatening sermons, and four thousand years of long hair.

I had clipped endless news items; highlighted references, magazine articles, and advertisements; dated them; and
organized them into categories. Flip had stolen my stapler, I had run out of paper clips, and Desiderata hadn't been able
find any more, so I had had to settle for stacking them, in order, in the box, which I was now trying to maneuver into my

The box was heavy and had been made by the same people who manufacture paper sacks for the supermarket, s
when I'd dumped it just outside the lab so I could unlock the door, it had developed a major rip down one side. I was
half-wrestling, half-dragging it over next to one of the lab tables so I could lift the stacks of clippings out when the whole
started to give way.

An avalanche of magazine pages and newspaper stories began to spill out through the side before I could get it pu
back in place, and I grabbed for them and the box as Flip opened the door and slouched in, looking disgusted. She was
wearing black lipstick, a black halter, and a black leather micro-skirt and was carrying a box about the size of mine.

"I'm not supposed to have to deliver packages," she said. "You're supposed to pick them up in the mail room."

"I didn't know I had a package," I said, trying to hold the box together with one hand and reach a roll of duct tape
the middle of the lab table with the other. "Just set it down anywhere."

She rolled her eyes. "You're supposed to get a notice saying you have a package."

Yes, well, and you were probably supposed to deliver it, I thought, which explains why I never got it. "Could you
me that duct tape?" I said.

"Employees aren't supposed to ask interdepartmental assistants to run personal errands or make coffee," Flip said

"Handing me a roll of tape is not a personal errand," I said.

Flip sighed. "I'm supposed to be delivering the interdepartmental mail." She tossed her hair. She had shaved her h
the week before but had left a long hank along the front and down one side expressly for flipping when she feels put-upo