"Dick, Philip K - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"So have I," Rick said tensely.
"You've handled assignments devolving to you from Dave's schedule; he's always decided
exactly which ones to turn over to you and which not to. But now you've got six that he
intended to retire himself Ч one of which managed to get him first. This one." Bryant turned
the notes around so that Rick could see. "Max Polokov," Bryant said. "That's what it calls
itself, anyhow. Assuming Dave was right. Everything is based on that assumption, this entire
list. And yet the Voigt-Kampff Altered Scale has only been administered to the first three, the
two Dave retired and then Polokov. It was while Dave was administering the test; that's when
Polokov lasered him."
"Which proves that Dave was right," Rick said. Otherwise he would not have been
lasered; Polokov would have no motive.
"You get started for Seattle," Bryant said. "Don't tell them first; I'll handle it. Listen." He rose
to his feet, soberly confronted Rick. "When you run the Voigt-Kampff scale up there, if one of
the humans fails to pass it Ч "
"That can't happen," Rick said.
"One day, a few weeks ago, I talked with Dave about exactly that. He had been thinking
along the same lines. I had a memo from the Soviet police, W.P.O. itself, circulated
throughout Earth plus the colonies. A group of psychiatrists in Leningrad have approached
W.P.O. with the following proposition. They want the latest and most accurate personality
profile analytical tools used in determining the presence of an android Ч in other words the
Voigt-Kampff scaleapplied to a carefully selected group of schizoid and schizophrenic
human patients. Those, specifically, which reveal what's called a 'flattening of affect.' You've
heard of that."
Rick said, "That's specifically what the scale measures."
"Then you understand what they're worried about."
"This problem has always existed. Since we first encountered androids posing as
humans. The consensus of police opinion is known to you in Lurie Kampff s article, written
eight years ago. Role-taking Blockage in the Undeteriorated Schizophrenic. Kampff
compared the diminished emphatic faculty found in human mental patients and a
superficially similar but basically Ч "
"The Leningrad psychiatrists," Bryant broke in brusquely, "think that a small class of
human beings could not pass the Voigt-Kampff scale. If you tested them in line with police
work you'd assess them as humanoid robots. You'd be wrong, but by then they'd be dead."
He was silent, now, waiting for Rick's answer.
"But these individuals," Rick said, "would all be Ч "
"They'd be in institutions," Bryant agreed. "They couldn't conceivably function in the
outside world; they certainly couldn't go undetected as advanced psychotics Ч unless of
course their breakdown had come recently and suddenly and no one had gotten around to
noticing. But this could happen."
"A million to one odds," Rick said. But he saw the point.
"What worried Dave," Bryant continued, "is this appearance of the new Nexus-6 advance
type. The Rosen organization assured us, as you know, that a Nexus-6 could be delineated
by standard profile tests. We took their word for it. Now we're forced, as we knew we would
be, to determine it on our own. That's what you'll be doing in Seattle. You understand, don't
you that this could go wrong either way. If you can't pick out all the humanoid robots, then we
have no reliable analytical tool and we'll never find the ones who're already escaping. If your
scale factors out a human subject, identifies him as android Ч " Bryant beamed at him icily.
"It would be awkward, although no one, absolutely not the Rosen people, will make the news
public. Actually we'll be able to sit on it indefinitely, although of course we'll have to inform
W.P.O. and they in turn will notify Leningrad. Eventually it'll pop out of the 'papes at us. But by