Achille's Choice by Larry Niven (Steve Barnes)

Author:Larry Niven (Steve Barnes) [Niven, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

"Holly?"

"Jillian. How you doing?" Holly looked up. She had been staring at her screen, her hands folded in her lap.

"Not ready to fight Osa yet. I thought I could work on my thesis while I heal, but . . . hell. I need a new direction. How are you doing? Can we take the death out of Boost?"

"I don't have a short answer-"

"I was wondering if . . . Holly, you know I'm working with chaos theory?"

"Sure."

"Some problems are unsolvable because they're

very sensitive to initial conditions. What if I were to do a fractal analysis of Boost, using your data?"

Holly's eyes were not hostile, but wary. "And what if I've been trying to trisect the angle?"

"If you could prove it was impossible, you'd get gold." Holly stared. "No fertilizer, Holly, it can be very important to prove something's impossible."

Page 53

"No fertilizer?"

Jillian flushed and shrugged.

Holly grinned happily at Jillian's embarrassment. "Repeat after me. Shhh-come on, the whole world won't stare in horror if you use the S word."

Jillian wagged her head, but giggled. "I just can't."

"Girl, I don't know what we're going to do with you. All right. What do you need?"

"Well, when they learned that about weather control, it started a whole new science. You can't predict weather more than three, four days ahead. Could that be true of a Boosted athlete's body chemistry?"

"What is it you want?"

"Let's play a little. If we find something, you'll still have to finish the work yourself. You'd have to invest a few months learning fractal geometry. If we find nothing but blind alleys, you invest nothing. See?

And maybe I can come at something from a different angle."

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