"De Camp, L Sprague - RK 1 - The Undesired Princess UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (De Camp L Sprague)

Prince answered: "This one's different. YouTl see. Oh, by the way, have you changed your mind about the party tomorrow night yet?"

"Nope. I told you, work."

"Oh my gosh. You don't go anywhere any more." Prince shrugged hopelessly. "I suppose that now the strike-breaking business isn't so hotЧ"

Hobart straightened angrily. "Higgins and Hobart are not strike-breakers. I thought I explainedЧ"

"How about thatЧ"

"It isn't our fault if our investigator exceeded his instructions. It was his idea to hire thoseЧ"

"Yeah," interrupted Prince, "but you and Higgins knew Karsen was a hard egg when you took him on. So you're partly responsible for that riotЧ"

"Not at all. You know the judge decided, when Karsen sued us because the strikers had knocked out all his teeth, that he hadn't been acting as our agent at the time."

Prince laughed. "That was the funniest darn thingЧ"

Hobart grinned wryly. "To you, maybe, but not to those on the inside. The company lost business, the strikers lost their pay, we lost our fee and the legal expenses, and Karsen lost his teeth. My point just was we were legally cleared, so we're not strikebreakers. Q.E.D. We're consulting engineers, and it's only natural that our clients should consult us about (heir labor-relations problems."

THE UNDESIRED PRINCESS 5

Prince replied: "The trouble with you, Roily, is that you're a black-and-white thinker; everything either is so or it isn't. That's Aristotelian logic, which has been long since exploded. You'd make a good Communist if you hadn't got started in life as a shellback conservativeЧ"

Hobart gave up all effort to concentrate on his engineering figures and pitched into his friend: "You're the black-and-white thinker, my lad. Because I accidentally get associated with a strike-breaker, I hate the poor toiling masses; and from the feet that I think that permanently unbalanced budgets mean trouble either for individuals or government, you infer I'm a hidebound reactionary! The trouble with you guys who dabble in social theories is that you invent a lot of pretty laws and expect the world to conform to themЧ"

"I only saidЧ" interrupted Prince. But Hobart, once started, was not so easily stopped.

"And you're wrong about Aristotelian logic's being exploded," he continued in an authoritative rasp. "All that's happened is that it's been recognized as a special case of the more general forms of logic, just as plane trigonometry is a special case of spherical. That doesn't mean it's useless; it's just more limited in its application than was once thought. We could hardly conceive a world where Aristotelian two-value logic did apply generally; for instance everything would have to be red or not red, so nothing would be pink or vermiUion ..."

"Speaking of which, my friendЧ"

"I'm not through, George. Matter of feet Plato did have some glimmering of the concepts of continuity and multiple causation, which Aristotle missed. If Plato hadn't been so full of foggy idealistic mysticismЧ what's that about your friend?"

6 L. Sprague de Camp

George Prince, caught off balance, took a few seconds to get back in his groove. He finally said: "WellЧ uhЧit's land of hard to explain. I don't know him very well, and I don't really believe in him yet. But if you see him, too, he must be real."

Hobart frowned, "I should think so. But what's the matterЧseeing things? Too many hot rums?"

"Yes and no. I see him, but the question is am I seeing something that's really there?"

"That ought to be easy," said Hobart with an impatient gesture. "Either he's there or he isn'tЧ"

"There you go!" cried Prince triumphandy. "Either Чor! I knewЧuhЧcome in!"

They stared at the door, which opened to reveal a gaunt old man with unkempt white whiskers. This individual wore an overcoat that Hobart recognized as belonging to his friend Prince. As far as one could tell, that was all the oldster had on; below its hem extended a pair of hairy shanks ending in large calloused bare feet. He carried a rectangular wooden object with hinges and snaps, about the size of a suitcase.

Hobart asked Prince: "IsЧthisЧyourЧMr. Hoimon?"