"Damon Knight - A for Anything" - читать интересную книгу автора (Knight Damon)

OF THE GISMO.
WARNING:
DO NOT ALLOW THE OBJECT BEING COPIED TO COME IN CONTACT WITH ANYTHING ELSE.


Breitfeller read this through twice in silence, ignoring the heavy breathing of the two
women leaning on his shoulders. He was a pink-faced man, rather popeyed and without very
much chin, but stronger than he looked.
He inspected the two crosses unhurriedly, up-ending them to see if there was anything on
the bottom, then examining each part of the wiring.
"It's a trick," said Ruth over his shoulder. "A silly trick."
"Maybe," said Breitfeller, putting his cigar back in his mouth. He saw that the wires stapled
to the crossarms of the two Gismos were really loops, and that the curious little
metal-and-glass blocks which hung from them were suspended by these loops.
There was just the one circuit, that looped over to one of the little metal-glass blocks on
the left side and then looped over to the other on the right side. The rest of it, attached to
the upright, was nothing but a pair of dry cells and an ordinary light switch.
Breitfeller thought he could build one of these himself, in half an hour, except for the little
glass-metal blocks. He had never seen one of those before.
He leaned over the table and peered closer. The glass was a curious-looking cloudy stuff,
possibly not glass but a plastic, and it was coated with copper on both sides. On the bottom
side of each block there was a small copper hook. It looked to Breitfeller as if the glass or
whatever it was would be plenty to insulate that hook from the feeble current that would go
through the loop of wire: so the Gismo couldn't actually do anything, much less what it was
advertised to do. But when he looked at those little metal-glass-metal sandwiches, he wasn't
so sure.
His older son, Pete, came in saying, "Dad, I'm going to take the car over to Glendale this
morning, okay? Whatcha got?"
"Gismos," said Breitfeller wryly, around his cigar. He was frowning at the nearest cross. You
closed the switch here; the current went up here, through these little contacts, and around
here, past the left-hand glass-metal block but not through it, and then over here, doing the
same to the right-hand glass-metal block, and then back to the dry cells. It seemed to him
that nothing could possibly happen if you tried it. His fingers began to itch.
"Hey," said Pete, reaching, "let me see that."
Breitfeller forestalled him. "Keep your hands off," he said indistinctly.
"Dad, I know all about that electronics jazz."
"Not about this electronics jazz, you don't." Breitfeller got up with a cross in each hand.
"Harry, what are you going to do?" his wife asked, looking alarmed.
"I think you ought to call the police," said Ruth, behind her.
Breitfeller said, "I'm going out behind the garage. By myself." He departed, past his
brother-in-law Mack, who was just up and looked half asleep, but had curiosity enough to say
"What's that?" as Breitfeller went by.
He went out through the kitchen and the back porch, banging the screen door behind him,
and walked across the yard to the alley. There was about three feet of space between the
side of his garage and the fence, and nothing across the alley but the back of a brewery
warehouse, so Breitfeller figured that if anything should go wrong, there would not be too
much damage.
He set both the Gismos down carefully on the stack of scrap lumber and stared at them.
"TO OPERATE, SIMPLY ATTACH A SAMPLE OF WHATEVER YOU WISH TO COPY ... " There was
a little coil of bare copper wire wound handily around the copper hook under the left-hand