Lord Byron's Novel by John Crowley Read Free Book Online Page A

thought this was important. She really does want to entirely remake the site and make it the best on the Web for women’s science history. We sat a long time looking at things like the Jewish Women’s Archive and the other sites we get so jealous about, and she kept saying no prob. Well she doesn’t say that, she says things in the English way, like How delightful and Won’t it be such fun, and she says Of course a lot, meaning I don’t know exactly what. I’ll say What we need to do in the engineering is this, and she says Of course, like she already thought of that and it’s in the works.
     
    I told you I’m not going to talk to her about money, right? I told you. She keeps trying to and I keep putting her off. It would be great if you could drop her a note and say the money is your end. But wow just to have to fight off the bucks being offered is a strange new feeling, huh? Should we be worried? Are we being secretly taken over by a Daddy Warbucks or something? A stalking horse, or a Trojan horse, or whatever?
     
    Meantime she’s very passionate about me staying here and doing some research and assembling materials and looking at stuff, even before decisions get made about changes at the site, and it’s okay with me if it’s okay with you. I might be moving into her apartment, flat as she says, to save money. (See it’s not bottomless pockets just deep ones.) She’s cleaning out a room. Which is not so nice but okay.
     
    So I’ll keep you posted. Say hello to everybody and tell them I’ve got union jack tea towels and queen dolls for everybody.
     
    See ya
     
    Smith
    From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: Difference Engine
     
    Thea—
     
    The one page was written by Byron, the poet. I thought it was. You can tell easily if you look at some of his writing reproduced in books. I can’t really read all of it, or even most of it. Remember how long it took me to read those Royal Society letters, and then when I could, you didn’t know how I could, it just looked like scribble to you—well that’s what this looks like to me, scribble. But I know it’s written by him. Why one page, what is it, why is it here.
     
    I don’t know what the math stuff is. Like I said it’s a lot of printed pages, just a page number in the upper right and then blocks of numbered lines in four columns, fifty lines to a column. The lines are for writing in, like a form, I guess; and what’s written is strings of numbers. Could they be mathematical tables? I know that the Difference Engine, that Ada worked on with Babbage, was designed to print out tables of logarithms—that was supposed to be its main job, calculating them and printing them, but as I remember the printing part never got completed. What if this had something to do with the Difference Engine? Wouldn’t that be something?
     
    There’s a museum here that actually has a copy, a newly made reproduction rather, of the Difference Engine. Maybe I’ll go ask them. Subtly.
     
    S
    From: “Thea”
To: “Smith”
Subject: Movie
    log tables would be easy to recognize i could tell you just send me a page or two
     
    know what i watched late last night on tv the history channel youre surprised huh they had that movie about the movie company in wherever it was baruchistan or faroukistan or wherever it was in the 1920s grass you remember thats your dads movie right it was weird i fell asleep before it ended
     
    t
    From: “Smith”
To: “Thea”
Subject: RE:Movie
    T—
     
    Yeah that was his first film. Grass . He wrote that one before I was born. The story is that he discovered this whole old movie, well not whole but hours of film shot in the 1920s in Baluchistan, wherever, by the same filmmakers who made King Kong; their film was supposed to be called Grass . He wrote a script about the filmmakers