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

businesslike attitude. That way I'll want to hop up to the roof and check out the sheep and
then head for the office; meanwhile I'll know you're not sitting here brooding with no TV." He
released her slim, long fingers, passed through the spacious apartment to the living room,
which smelled faintly of last night's cigarettes. There he bent to turn on the TV.
From the bedroom Iran's voice came. "I can't stand TV before breakfast."
"Dial 888," Rick said as the set warmed. "The desire to watch TV, no matter what's on it."
"I don't feel like dialing anything at all now," Iran said.
"Then dial 3," he said.
"I can't dial a setting that stimulates my cerebral cortex into wanting to dial! If I don't want to
dial, I don't want to dial that most of all, because then I will want to dial, and wanting to dial is
right now the most alien drive I can imagine; I just want to sit here on the bed and stare at the
floor." Her voice had become sharp with overtones of bleakness as her soul congealed and
she ceased to move, as the instinctive, omnipresent film of great weight, of an almost
absolute inertia, settled over her.
He turned up the TV sound, and the voice of Buster Friendly boomed out and filled the
room. " Ч ho ho, folks. Time now for a brief note on today's weather. The Mongoose satellite
reports that fallout will be especially pronounced toward noon and will then taper off, so all
you folks who'll be venturing out Ч "
Appearing beside him, her long nightgown trailing wispily, Iran shut off the TV set. "Okay, I
give up; I'll dial. Anything you want me to be; ecstatic sexual bliss Ч I feel so bad I'll even
endure that. What the hell. What difference does it make?"
"I'll dial for both of us, Rick said, and led her back into the bedroom. There, at her console,
he dialed 594: pleased acknowledgment of husband's superior wisdom in all matters. On his
own console he dialed for a creative and fresh attitude toward his job, although this he hardly
needed; such was his habitual, innate approach without recourse to Penfield artificial brain
stimulation.

After a hurried breakfast Ч he had lost time due to the discussion with his wife Ч he
ascended clad for venturing out, including his Ajax model Mountibank Lead Codpiece, to the
covered roof pasture whereon his electric sheep "grazed." Whereon it, sophisticated piece
of hardware that it was, chomped away in simulated contentment, bamboozling the other
tenants of the building.
Of course, some of their animals undoubtedly consisted of electronic circuitry fakes, too;
he had of course never nosed into the matter, any more than they, his neighbors, had pried
into the real workings of his sheep. Nothing could be more impolite. To say, "Is your sheep
genuine?" would be a worse breach of manners than to inquire whether a citizen's teeth,
hair, or internal organs would test out authentic.
The morning air, spilling over with radioactive motes, gray and sun Ч beclouding, belched
about him, haunting his nose; fie sniffed involuntarily the taint of death. Well, that was too
strong a description for it, he decided as he made his way to the particular plot of sod which
he owned along with the unduly large apartment below. The legacy of World War Terminus
had diminished in potency; those who could not survive the dust had passed into oblivion
years ago, and the dust, weaker now and confronting the strong survivors, only deranged
minds and genetic properties. Despite his lead codpiece the dust Ч undoubtedly Ч filtered
in and at him, brought him daily, so long as he failed to emigrate, its little load of befouling
filth. So far, medical checkups taken monthly confirmed him as a regular: a man who could
reproduce within the tolerances set by law. Any month, however, the exam by the San
Francisco Police Department doctors could reveal otherwise. Continually, new specials
came into existence, created out of regulars by the omnipresent dust. The saying currently
blabbed by posters, TV ads, and government junk mail, ran: "Emigrate or degenerate! The