"Robert A. Heinlein - The Door into Summer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

were hibernating; second, how long I wanted us to sleep; third, how I wanted my
money invested while I was in the freezer; and last, what happened if I conked
out and never woke up.
I finally settled on the year 2000, a nice round number and only thirty
years away. I was afraid that if I made it any longer I would be completely out
of touch. The changes in the last thirty years (my own lifetime) had been enough
to bug a manтАЩs eyes out-two big wars and a dozen little ones, the downfall of
communism, the Great Panic, the artificial satellites, the change to atomic
power-why, when I was a kid they didnтАЩt even have multimorphs.
I might find 2000 A.D. pretty confusing. But if I didnтАЩt jump that far
Belle would not have time to work up a fancy set of wrinkles.
When it came to how to invest my dough I did not consider government bonds
and other conservative investments; our fiscal system has inflation built into
it. I decided to hang onto my Hired Girl stock and put the cash into other
common stocks, with a special eye to some trends I thought would grow.
Automation was bound to get bigger. I picked a San Francisco fertilizer firm
too; it had been experimenting with yeasts and edible algae├Дthere were more
people every year and steak wasnтАЩt going to get any cheaper. The balance of the
money I told him to put into the companyтАЩs managed trust fund.
But the real choice lay in what to do if I died in hibernation. The
company claimed that the odds were better than seven out of ten that I would
live through thirty years of cold sleep . . . and the company would take either
end of the bet. The odds werenтАЩt reciprocal and I didnтАЩt expect them to be; in
any honest gambling there is a breakage to the house. Only crooked gamblers
claim to give the sucker the best of it, and insurance is legalized gambling.
The oldest and most reputable insurance firm in the world, LloydтАЩs of London,
makes no bones about it├ДLloydтАЩs associates will take either end of any bet. But
donтАЩt expect better-than-track odds: somebody has to pay for Our Mr. PowellтАЩs
tailor-made suits.
I chose to have every cent go to the company trust fund in case I died. .
. which made Mr. Powell want to kiss me and made me wonder just how optimistic
those seven-out-of-ten odds were. But I stuck with it because it made me an heir
(if I lived) of everyone else with the same option (if they died), Russian
roulette with the survivors picking up the chips . . . and with the company, as
usual, raking in the house percentage.
I picked every alternative for the highest possible return and no hedging
if I guessed wrong; Mr. Powell loved me, the way a croupier loves a sucker who
keeps playing the zero. By the time we had settled my estate he was anxious to
be reasonable about Pete; we settled for 15 per cent of the human fee to pay for
PeteтАЩs hibernation and drew up a separate contract for him.
There remained consent of court and the physical examination. The physical
I didnтАЩt worry about; I had a hunch that, once I elected to have the company bet
that I would die, they would accept me even in the last stages of the Black
Death. But I thought that getting a judge to okay it might be lengthy. It had to
be done, because a client in cold sleep was legally in chancery, alive but
helpless.
I neednтАЩt have worried. Our Mr. Powell had quadruplicate originals made of
nineteen different papers. I signed till I got finger cramps, and a messenger
rushed away with them while I went to my physical examination; I never even saw
the judge.