"Bradbury, Ray & Hasse, Harry - The Pendulum" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bradbury Ray)

dare not stop my pendulum, my little world, for fear of the effect it may have
on me!
(Still later): These men, these puny scientists, have dropped a microphone down
the tube to me! They have actually remembered that I was once a great scientist,
encased here cruelly. In vain they have sought the reason for my longevity; now
they want me to converse with them, giving my symptoms and reactions and
suggestions! They are perplexed, but hopeful, desiring the secret of eternal
life to which they feel I can give them a clue. I have already been here two
hundred years, they tell me; they are the fifth generation.
At first I said not a word, paying no attention to the microphone. I merely
listened to their babblings and pleadings until I weared of it. Then I grasped
the microphone and looked up and saw their tense, eager faces, awaiting my
words.
"One does not easily forgive such an injustice as this," I shouted. "And I do
not believe I shall be ready to until five more generations."
Then I laughed. Oh, how I laughed.
"He's insane!" I heard one of them say: "The secret of immortality may lie
somehow with him, but I feel we shall never learn it; and we dare not stop the
pendulum--that might break the timefield, or whatever it is that's holding him
in thrall...."
(MUCH LATER): It has been a longer time than I care to think, since I wrote
those last words. Years . . . I know not how many. I have almost forgotten how
to hold a pencil in my fingers to write.
Many things have transpired, many changes have come in the crazy world out
there.
Once I saw wave after wave of planes, so many that they darkened the sky, far
out in the direction of the ocean, moving toward the city; and a host of planes
arising from here, going out to meet them; and a brief, but lurid and
devastating battle in which planes fell like leaves in the wind; and some planes
triumphantly returning, I know not which ones...
But all that was very long ago, and it matters not to me. My daily parcels of
food continue to come down the pendulem stem; I suspect that it has become a
sort of ritual, and the inhabitants of the city, whoever they are now, have long
since forgotten the legend of why I was encased here. My little world continues
to swing in its arc, and I continue to observe the puny little creatures out
there who blunder through their brief span of life.
Already I have outlived generations! Now I want to outlive the very last one of
them! I shall!
. . . Another thing, too, I have noticed. The attendants who daily drop the
parcels of food for me, and vacuum out the cell, are robots! Square, clumsy,
ponderous and four-limbed things--unmistakably metal robots, only vaguely human
in shape.
. . . I begin to see more and more of these clumsy robots about the city. Oh,
yes, humans too--but they only come on sight-seeing tours and pleasure jaunts
now; they live, for the most part, in luxury high among the towering buildings.
Only the robots occupy the lower level now, doing all the menial and mechanical
tasks necessary to the operation of the city. This, I suppose, is progress as
these self centered beings have willed it.
. . . robots are becoming more complicated, more human in shape and movements .
. . and more numerous . . . uncanny ... I have a premonition....