"C M Kornbluth - The Marching Morons Collection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Whambozambo Comix and he sat down with it. An occasional deep chuckle or grunt of surprise
escaped him as he turned the pages.

Uninterrupted, the potter and the buyer's secretary quickly closed a deal for two dozen of the liter
carafes. "I wish we could take more," said the secretary, "but you heard what I told him. We've had to
turn away customers for ordinary dinnerware because he shot the last quarter's budget on some Mexican
piggy banks some equally enthusiastic importer stuck him with. The fifth floor is packed solid with them."

"I'll bet they look mighty est'etic."

"They're painted with purple cacti."

The potter shuddered and caressed the glaze of the sample carafe.

The buyer looked up and rumbled, "Ain't you dummies through yakkin' yet? What good's a seckertary
for if'n he don't take the burden of de-tail off'n my back, harh?"

"We're all through, doctor. Are you ready to go?"

The buyer grunted peevishly, dropped Whambozambo Comix on the floor and led the way out of the
building and down the log corduroy road to the highway. His car was waiting on the concrete. It was,
like all contemporary cars, too low slung to get over the logs. He climbed down into the car and started
the motor with a tremendous sparkle and roar.

"Gomez-Laplace," called out the potter under cover of the noise, "did anything come of the radiation
program they were working on the last time I was on duty at the Pole?"

"The same old fallacy," said the secretary gloomily. "It stopped us on mutation, it stopped us on culling, it
stopped us on segregation, and now it's stopped us on hypnosis."

"Well, I'm scheduled back to the grind in nine days. Time for another firing right now. I've got a new
luster to try. . ."

"I'll miss you. I shall be 'vacationing'-running the drafting room of the New Century Engineering
Corporation in Denver. They're going to put up a two-hundred-story office building, and naturally
somebody's got to be on hand."

"Naturally," said Hawkins with a sour smile.




There was an ear-piercingly sweet blast as the buyer leaned on the horn button. Also, a yard-tall jet of
what looked like flame spurted up from the car's radiator cap; the car's power plant was a gas turbine
and had no radiator.

"I'm coming, doctor," said the secretary dispiritedly. He climbed down into the car and it whooshed off
with much flame and noise.

The potter, depressed, wandered back up the corduroy road and contemplated his cooling kilns. The