"Dick, Philip K - Now Wait for Last Year v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

Within the room Ц a storeroom, evidently Ц small carts rolled about on silver-dollar-sized wheels; twenty or more of them, astutely avoiding one another in their zealous activity.


On board each cart Eric saw a Lazy Brown Dog, wired in place and controlling the movements of the cart.


Presently Jonas rubbed the side of his nose, grunted, said, 'What powers them?' Stooping, he managed to snare a cart as it wheeled by his foot; he lifted it up, its wheels still spinning futilely.


'Just a little cheap ten-year A-battery,' Himmel said. 'Costs another half cent.'


'And you built these carts?'


'Yes, Mr Ackerman.' Himmel took the cart from him and set it back on the floor; once more it wheeled industriously off. 'These are the ones too new to let go,' he explained. 'They have to practice.'


'And then,' Jonas said, 'you give them their freedom.'


That's right.' Himmel bobbed his large-domed, almost bald head, his horn-rimmed glasses sliding forward on his nose.


'Why?' Eric said.


Now the crux of the matter had been broached; Himmel turned red, twitched miserably, and yet displayed an obscure, defensive pride. 'Because,' he blurted, 'they deserve it.'


Jonas said, 'But the protoplasm's not alive; it died when the chemical fixing-spray was applied. You know that. From then on it Ц all of these Ц is nothing but an electronic circuit, as dead as Ц well, as a robant.'


With dignity Himmel answered, 'But I consider them alive, Mr Ackerman. And just because they're inferior and incapable of guiding a rocketship in deep space, that doesn't mean they have no right to live out their meager lives. I release them and they wheel around for, I expect, six years or possibly longer; that's enough. That gives them what they're entitled to.'


Turning to Eric, Jonas said, 'If the old man knew about thisЧ'


'Mr Virgil Ackerman knows about this,' Himmel said at once. 'He approves of it.' He amended, 'Or rather, he lets me do it; he knows I'm reimbursing the company. And I build the carts at night, on my own time; I have an assembly line Ц naturally very primitive, but effective Ц in my conapt where I live.' He added, 'I work till around one o'clock every night.'


'What do they do after they're released?' Eric asked. 'Just roam the city?'


'God knows,' Himmel said. Obviously that part was not his concern; he had done his job by building the carts and wiring the Lazy Brown Dogs in functioning position. And perhaps he was right; he could hardly accompany each cart, defend it against the hazards of the city.


'You're an artist,' Eric pointed out, not sure if he was amused or revolted or just what. He was not impressed; that much he was sure of: the entire enterprise had a bizarre, zany quality Ц it was absurd. Himmel ceaselessly at work both here and at his conapt, seeing to it that the factory rejects got their place in the sun ... what next? And this, while everyone else sweated out the folly, the greater, collective absurdity, of a bad war.