"Henry Kuttner - Android UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

"Yes, that's all for now," Court said pleasantly.

Bradley went out, trying to forget the narrow red line he had just seen circling the Director's throat, revealed when the man had turned his head.

The things couldn't be killed by decapitation, then. But they could be destroyed. They could be dissolved with acid, smashed with a hammer, dismantled, burned. . . .

The trouble was, there was as yet no sure way to recognize the creatures. The sterility curve after exposure to mild radioactivity meant something, but ordinary humans could have become sterilized tooЧthough not usually by such slight dosages of gamma rays. And even then, some people were sterile anyway.

All Bradley had was a general method of screening. After that, he had to depend on psychology to weed out the monsters. He knew that they could usually be found in positions of power and influence, though not necessarily in the public eye. Like Arthur Court, who, as Director of New Products, Inc., wielded tremendous influence on the cultureЧsince civilization is moulded by the technological tools placed in its hands.

Bradley shivered.

Last night he had cut off Arthur Court's head.

Arthur Court was an android.

"And what are you going to do about it?" Bradley asked himself in the hall outside Court's door. He looked down with a certain academic interest at his own hand shaking until the papers he held fluttered. What could he do about it? He or any other man?

You couldn't fight them on equal terms. Probably their I.Q. was far higher than mankind's. On terms of pure intellect Bradley would' have no chance at all. Super-comptometers could solve abstruse problems no limited human mind could tackle. Last night Bradley had worn a distorting rubber maskЧbut if Court's cold metallic brain set itself the problem of reasoning out his identity, wouldn't Court arrive at the right answer sooner or later?

Had he already arrived at an answer?

Bradley suppressed a panicky impulse to run. There was such dead silence behind the door at his elbow. For all he knew they had vision that could slip between the buzzing atoms of the door and see Bradley here as if he stood beyond glassЧsee through him and into the patterns of his brain, and read all bis thoughts as they took form.

"They're only androids," he reminded himself with great firmness, forcing his gait to a walk as he turned away down the hall. "If they had that much power I wouldn't be here now."

Still, he wondered with a corroding urgency just what had happened last night after he left Court's apartment. He would not think of how Court had looked, lying there motionless beside the heavy steel blade dimmed by that stickiness that looked like blood and was not human blood.

Had he repaired himself, after Bradley left? Repaired was the word, of courseЧnot cured. Only a human could be cured. It probably depended on just where the brain of the android was located. Not necessarily in the head. The head is really too vulnerable a place for such an important mechanism. You could improve on the structure of the human in so many ways. Perhaps the androids had. Perhaps Court's brain was sheltered somewhere in the mysterious chambers of his synthetic body, and its cold, clicking thoughts had gone on then- steely processes all the while Bradley stood there looking down in incredulous shock at the body of hisЧhis victim?

Which was the victim and which the victor?

All functional processes had certainly stopped in the

robot after decapitation. Bradley had made sure of that. No respiration, no heartbeat. But somewhere inside, perhaps the metallic brain had been clicking quietly on its cold way. So cold, Bradley thought irrationally, that not all the synthetic warmth of the synthetic blood could raise it a fraction of a degree toward human temperature.

Either Court's body had risen after Bradley left, then, and welded on the head again, or else others had come toЧrepairЧthe sabotage. Did each robot, in operation, send out the equivalent of a steady beam of energy which, when it ceased, brought a repair crew to the spot? If that had happened, it was lucky Bradley had not lingered too long hi that room where no murder had been done, though Court's head lay so far from his motionless body. . . .

Of course 1 could be fust as crazy as a bedbug, Bradley reminded himself sardonically. Certainly he would have a hard time convincing anyone he wasn't. And he would have to convince someone. He couldn't go on alone any farther. He had gone too far now to keep this knowledge to himself. By his very act of proof, by the cutting off of an android head, he had given himself away. Sooner or later they would track down the identity of the man behind that rubber mask. Before it happened, he would have to pass this information on.

And there he ran his second terrible risk. The androids would show him no mercy when they caught him. But how much could he expect from his own kind, when he told his fantastic tale? /'// end in a padded cell, he thought, while they go on multiplying outside untilЧ

Until what? Until they outnumber the humans and take over control? Perhaps they already had. Perhaps they had let him go free after that harmless murder because only he was human now in the whole civilized world. . . . Perhaps he was quite harmless, really. PerhapsЧ

"Oh, shut up," Bradley urged himself impatiently.

"Then at least you don't suspect me of being aЧan android?" Dr. Wallinger asked dourly. He was slightly nervous, as the result of having sat for ten minutes now with a gun-muzzle pointed unwaveringly at his stomach. It was, of course, ridiculous that a mysterious rubber-masked figure hi a gold-braided cape whose flare concealed most of its wearer's body should be sitting here in his library forcing him to listen to psychotic nonsense.

"You have children," Bradley said, his voice a little muffled behind the mask. "That was how I could feel sure about you."