"Henry Kuttner - The Best of Henry Kuttner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

not be so far off the beam. He pursed his lips. "Eventually I suppose
people will eat quite differently-I mean the way they eat, as well as
what. What they eat, I mean. Jane, our son shows signs of becoming
a genius."
"Oh?"


"It's a rather good point in dietetics he just made. Did you figure it out yourself, Scott?"
"Sure," the boy said, and really believed it.
'Where'd you get the idea?"
"Oh, I-" Scott wriggled. "I dunno. It doesn't mean much, I guess."
Paradine was unreasonably disappointed. "But surely-"
"S-s-s-spit!" Emma shrieked, overcome by a sudden fit of badness. "Spit!" She attempted to demonstrate, but succeeded only in dribbling into her bib.
With a resigned air Jane rescued and reproved her daughter, while Paradine eyed Scott with rather puzzled interest. But it was not till after dinner, in the living room, that anything further happened.

"Any homework?"
"N-no," Scott said, flushing guiltily. To cover his embarrassment he took from his pocket a gadget he had found in the box, and began to unfold it. The result resembled a tesseract, strung with beads. Paradine didn't see it at first, but Emma did. She wanted to play with it.
"No. Lay off, Slug," Scott ordered. "You can watch me." He fumbled with the beads, making soft, interested noises. Emma extended a fat forefinger and yelped.
"Scotty," Paradine said warningly.
"I didn't hurt her."
"Bit me. It did," Emma mourned.
Paradine looked up. He frowned, staring. What in- "Is that an abacus?" he asked. "Let's see it, please."
Somewhat unwillingly, Scott brought the gadget across to his father's chair. Paradine blinked. The "abacus," unfolded, was more than a foot square, composed of thin, rigid wires that interlocked here and there. On the wires the colored beads were strung. They could be slid back and forth, and from one support to another, even at the points of jointure. But-a pierced bead couldn't cross interlocking wires.
So, apparently, they weren't pierced. Paracline looked closer. Each small sphere had a deep groove running around it, so that it could be revolved and slid along the wire at the same time. Paradine tried to pull one free. It clung as though magnetically. Iron? It looked more like plastic.
The framework itself-Paradine wasn't a mathematician. But the angles formed by the wires were vaguely shocking, in their ridiculous lack of Euclidean logic. They were a maze. Perhaps that's what the gadget was-a puzzle.
'Where'd you get this?"


"Uncle Harry gave it to me," Scott said, on the spur of the moment. "Last Sunday, when he came over." Uncle Harry was out of town, a circumstance Scott well knew. At the age of seven, a boy soon learns that the vagaries of adults follow a certain definite pattern, and that they are fussy about the donors of gifts. Moreover, Uncle Harry would not return for several weeks; the expiration of that period was unimaginable to Scott, or, at least, the fact that his lie would ultimately be discovered meant less to him than the advantages of being allowed to keep the toy.

Paradine found himself growing slightly confused as he attempted to manipulate the beads. The angles were vaguely illogical. It was like a puzzle. This red bead, if slid along this wire to that junction, should reach there-but it didn't. A maze, odd, but no doubt instructive. Paradine had a well-founded feeling that he'd have no patience with the thing himself.
Scott did, however, retiring to a corner and sliding beads around with much fumbling and grunting. The beads did sting, when Scott chose the wrong ones or tried to slide them in the wrong direction. At last he crowed exultantly.
"I did it, Dad!"
"Eh? What? Let's see." The device looked exactly the same to Paradine, but Scott pointed and beamed.
"I made it disappear."
"It's still there."
"That blue bead. It's gone now."
Paradine didn't believe that, so he merely snorted. Scott puzzled over the framework again. He experimented. This time there were no shocks, even slight. The abacus had showed him the correct method. Now it was up to him to do it on his own. The bizarre angles of the wires seemed a little less confusing now, somehow.
It was a most instructive toy- It worked, Scott thought, rather like the crystal cube. Reminded of
that gadget, he took it from his pocket and relinquished the abacus to Emma, who was struck dumb with joy. She fell to work sliding the beads, this time without protesting against the shocks-which, indeed, were very minor-and, being imitative, she managed to make a bead disappear almost as quickly as had Scott. The blue bead reappeared- but Scott didn't notice. He had forethoughtfully retired into an angle of the chesterfield and an overstuffed chair and amused himself with the cube.
There were the little people inside the thing, tiny manikins much


enlarged by the magnifying properties of the crystal. They moved, all right. They built a house. It caught fire, with realistic-seeming flames, and the little people stood by waiting. Scott puffed urgently. "Put it out!"
But nothing happened. Where was that queer fire engine, with revolving arms, that had appeared before? Here it was. It came sailing into the picture and stopped. Scott urged it on.
This was fun. The little people really did what Scott told them, inside of his head. If he made a mistake, they waited till he'd found the right way. They even posed new problems for him.
The cube, too, was a most instructive toy. It was teaching Scott, with
alarming rapidity-and teaching him very entertainingly. But it gave
him no really new knowledge as yet. He wasn't ready. Later .
later .