[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Met."
"Right. Fact is, they had me arrest the Trasks for theft. But when they finally got their corporate head out
of the dirt, they dropped charges and tried to pretend it had been their idea all along. Now they're
modifying their killers and selling the emergency control rights."
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Give Me Liberty
Far away (he remembered the long hallways at Okemos Central), he heard voices. And none familiar.
Damn. The medics were going to get to him before his family. Big Al heard the commotion, too. He
stuck his head out the door, then said to Wil, "Well, Lieutenant, this is where I desert. You know the
short version, anyway." He walked across the room to pick up his data set.
Wil followed him with his eyes. "So it all ended for the best, except " Except for all those poor New
Mexican souls caught under a light brighter than any Kansas sun, except for "Kiki and Schwartz. I
wish they could know how things turned out."
Big Al stopped halfway to the door, a surprised look on his face. "Kiki and Jake? One is too smart to die
and the other is too mean! She knew Jake would thump her for bringing the New Mexicans across his
land. She and my boys were way underground long before he wiped off. And Jake was dug in even
deeper.
"Hell, Wil, they're even bigger celebrities than you are! Old Jake has become the Midwest's pop
armadillo. None of us ever guessed, least of all him: he enjoys being a public person. He and Kiki have
buried the hatchet. Now they're talking about a worldwide club for armadillos. They figure if one can
stop an entire nation state, what can a bunch of them do? You know: 'Make the world safe for the
ungoverned.' "
Then he was gone. Wil had just a moment to chew on the problems van Steen and Schwartz would cause
the Michigan State Police before the triumphant med techs crowded into his room.
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Give Me Liberty
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Give Me Liberty
HISTORICAL NOTE
Murray Leinster
Professor Vladimir Rojestvensky, it has since been learned, remade the world at breakfast one morning
while eating a bowl of rather watery red-cabbage soup, with black bread on the side. It is now a matter
of history that the soup was not up to par that day, and the black bread in Omsk all that week was sub-
marginal. But neither of these factors is considered to have contributed to the remaking of civilization.
The essential thing was that, while blowing on a spoonful of red-cabbage soup, Professor Rojestvensky
happened to think of an interesting inference or deduction to be drawn from the Bramwell-Weems
Equation expressing the distribution of energy among the nucleus-particles of the lighter atoms. The
Bramwell-Weems Equation was known in Russia as the Gabrilovitch-Brekhov Formula because,
obviously, Russians must have thought of it first. The symbols, however, were the same as in the
capitalist world.
Professor Rojestvensky contemplated the inference with pleasure. It was very interesting indeed. He
finished his breakfast, drank a glass of hot tea, wrapped himself up warmly, and set out for his
classrooms in the University of Omsk. It was a long walk, because the streetcars were not running. It
was a fruitful one, though. For as he walked, Professor Rojestvensky arranged his reasoning in excellent
order. When he arrived at the University he found a directive from the Council of Soviet Representatives
for Science and Culture. It notified him that from now on Soviet scientists must produce more and better
and more Earth-shaking discoveries or else. Therefore he would immediately report, in quadruplicate,
what first-rank discoveries he was prepared to make in the science of physics. And they had better be
good.
He was a modest man, was Professor Rojestvensky, but to fail to obey the directive meant losing his job.
So he quakingly prepared a paper outlining his extension of the Bramwell-Weems Equation but he was
careful to call it the Gabrilovitch-Brekhov Formula and persuaded one of his students to make four
copies of it in exchange for a quarter of a pound of cheese. Then he sent off the four copies and slept [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]