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

to stay. Loitering on Earth potentially meant finding oneself abruptly classed as biologically
unacceptable, a menace to the pristine heredity of the race. Once pegged as special, a
citizen, even if accepting sterilization, dropped out of history. He ceased, in effect, to be part
of mankind. And yet persons here and there declined to migrate; that, even to those involved,
constituted a perplexing irrationality. Logically, every regular should have emigrated already.
Perhaps, deformed as it was, Earth remained familiar, to be clung to. Or possibly the non-
emigrant imagined that the tent of dust would deplete itself finally. In any case thousands of
individuals remained, most of them constellated in urban areas where they could physically
see one another, take heart at their mutual presence. Those appeared to be the relatively
sane ones. And, in dubious addition to them, occasional peculiar entities remained in the
virtually abandoned suburbs.
John Isidore, being yammered at by the television set in his living room as he shaved in
the bathroom, was one of these.
He simply had wandered to this spot in the early days following the war. In those evil times
no one had known, really, what they were doing. Populations, detached by the war, had
roamed, squatted temporarily at first one region and then another. Back then the fallout had
been sporadic and highly variable; some states had been nearly free of it, others became
saturated. The displaced populations moved as the dust moved. The peninsula south of San
Francisco had been at first dust-free, and a great body of persons had responded by taking
up residence there; when the dust arrived, some had died and the rest had departed. J. R.
Isidore remained.
The TV set shouted, " Ч duplicates the halcyon days of the pre-Civil War Southern states!
Either as body servants or tireless field hands, the custom-tailored humanoid robot designed
specifically for YOUR UNIQUE NEEDS, FOR YOU AND YOU ALONE Ч given to you on
your arrival absolutely free, equipped fully, as specified by you before your departure from
Earth; this loyal, trouble-free companion in the greatest, boldest adventure contrived by man
in modern history will provide Ч " It continued on and on.
I wonder if I'm late for work, Isidore wondered as he scraped. He did not own a working
clock; generally he depended on the TV for time signals, but today was Interspace Horizons
Day, evidently. Anyhow the TV claimed this to be the fifth (or sixth?) anniversary of the
founding of New America, the chief U.S. settlement on Mars. And his TV set, being partly
broken, picked up only the channel which had been nationalized during the war and still
remained so; the government in Washington, with its colonization program, constituted the
sole sponsor which Isidore found himself forced to listen to.
"Let's hear from Mrs. Maggie Klugman," the TV announcer suggested to John Isidore, who
wanted only to know the time. "A recent immigrant to Mars, Mrs. Klugman in an interview
taped live in New New York had this to say. Mrs. Klugman, how would you contrast your life
back on contaminated Earth with your new life here in a world rich with every imaginable
possibility?" A pause, and then a tired, dry, middle-aged, female voice said, "I think what I
and my family of three noticed most was the dignity." "The dignity, Mrs. Klugman? " the
announcer asked. "Yes," Mrs. Klugman, now of New New York, Mars, said. "It's a hard thing
to explain. Having a servant you can depend on in these troubled times . . . I find it
reassuring."
"Back on Earth, Mrs. Klugman, in the old days, did you also worry about finding yourself
classified, ahem, as a special?"
"Oh, my husband and myself worried ourselves nearly to death. Of course, once we
emigrated that worry vanished, fortunately forever."
To himself John Isidore thought acidly, And it's gone away for me, too, without my having
to emigrate. He had been a special now for over a year, and not merely in regard to the
distorted genes which he carried. Worse still, he had failed to pass the minimum mental