Psychohistorical Crisis by Kingsbury Donald

Author:Kingsbury, Donald [Kingsbury, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Itzy, Kickass.to
ISBN: 0312861028
Amazon: 0312861028
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2001-12-23T05:00:00+00:00

Old Sledge seated him cordially. "I hadn't expected you so soon. Reinstone tells me you have something interesting for me."

"You were right," said Eron dejectedly. He shoved his bound folder in front of him. "But I did some work. It was pretty exciting—for a while."

"I was right, was I? Awful problem, that one, a devilish ball-cracker which has seduced me and then blasted me to crisp cairbon enough times so I know how you feel." He picked up the folder and opened it. He read it in less time than Eron had taken for the print job. That made Eron nervous. Only once did he glance up. "This isn't what you said in class."

"I had time to clean it up."

"You most certainly did. Who taught you Heraklians?"

"My tutor."

Sledge held up a palm to indicate a pause, said, "Liamin," and turned to his console, with quick deaf-mute hand gestures, checking through a storm of activity but sometimes pausing to think. He shut up Eron in midsentence when the boy tried to interrupt the silence. Then he swiveled around to face Eron. "You brought this for my comment, right?"

"If it's crazy, I want to know."

"You've vaulted right over my objection. Spacedamn it, I didn't expect you to bypass my objection, I expected you to find it!"

"You didn't tell me what it was, sir."

"I know." He swore by the gods that physicists fear. "Do you know what you've just done? You marched right through a demon's army without noticing them. You've done the best work on this problem in twenty-five centuries. I'm signing you up for my course."

"What?"

"I'm not letting you get out of it! Students like you don't wander into my class every semester."

"But I don't want to be a physicist."

Stunned silence. The physicist's sails were blown aback. How could anyone not want to be a physicist? He recovered and sailed on. "Is it that you'd rather dance and sing? Has Reinstone convinced you to write poetry? I see that he's given you one of those fake books that Rithians publish for the tourist trade." He took it and unsealed the cover. "I might have known! Another invented language. If you decode it you'll discover the secrets of the ancients. That's the blurb, eh? Don't forget that it's a bargain at a thousand credits." He winked and laughed and resealed the book, activating the susurrus of its pump. "So what do you want to be?"

"A psychohistorian."

Sledgehammer brought his face close to Eron's, studying it for madness. "Do you really believe that those charlatans can predict the future?" He scoffed and swiveled his aerochair toward the window. "If psychohistory was a science, they'd

PSYCHDHISTDRICAL CRISIS 263

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