"R. A. Lafferty - Stories 5" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lafferty R A)

about that. I've not given up yet, though I do need one more small morsel of
food if I'm to live through the day. Do you yourself ever get discouraged,
robin?"
Matthew Quoin was talking to a lone robin that was pulling worms out of
the browned grass that was beginning to be crusted with the first snow of the
season. But the robin didn't answer.
"You live on the promise of spring, robin, though you do well even now,"
Quoin said. "I also have a new promise to live for. I have been given a fresh
lease on life today, though it will be about seven years before I call put
that lease into effect. But, after you're old, seven years go by just like
nothing. A person in the Imperial Coin Nook (it's in a corncr of the Empire
Cigar and Hash Store) says that in about seven years my coins will have value,
and eventually he will be able to pay a nickel or dime or even fifteen cents
for each of them. And that is only the beginning, he says: in fifty years they
may be worth eighty cents or even a dollar each. I am starting to put one coin
out of every three into a little cranny in my sewer to save them. Of course,
for those seven years that I wait, I will go hungrier by one third. But this
promise is like a second sun coming up in the morning. I will rise and shine
with it."
"Bully for you, " the robin said.
"So I have no reason to be discouraged," Quoin went on. "I have a warm
and sheltered sewer to go to. And I have had a little bit, though not enough,
to eat today. I hallucinate, and I'm a trifle delirious and silly, I know. I'm
lighthearted, but I believe I could make it if I had just one more morsel to
eat. This has been the worst of my days foodwise, but they may get a little
bit better if I live through this one. It will be a sort of turning of the
worm for me now. Hey, robin, that was pretty good, the turning of the worm.
Did you get it?"
"I got it," said the robin. "It was pretty good."
"And how is it going with yourself?" Matthew Quoin asked.
"There's good days and bad ones," the robin said. "This is a pretty good
one. After the other robins have all gone south, I have pretty good
worm-hunting."
"Do you ever get discouraged?"
"I don't let myself," the robin said. "Fight on, I say. It's all right
today. I'm about full now."
"Then I'll fight on too," Matthew swore. "One extra morsel would save my
life, I believe. And you, perhaps, robin --"
"What do you have in mind?" the robin asked.
"Ah, robin, if you're not going to cat the other half of that worm --"
 "No, I've had plenty. Go ahead," the robin said.

SELENIUM GHOSTS OF THE EIGHTEEN SEVENTIES

Even today, the "invention" of television is usually ascribed to Paul
Nipkow of Germany, and the year is given as 1884. Nipkow used the principle of
the variation in the electrical conductivity of selenium when exposed to
light, and he used scanning discs as mechanical effectors. What else was there
for him to use before the development of the photo tube and the
current-amplifying electron tube? The resolution of Nipkow's television was