"Keith Laumer - Bolos 8 - Bolo Rising" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

"Waste not, want not, they always say," Wal quipped. He smiled, but the expression was no more
than a tired showing of dirty teeth.

There's more to it than that. They already had their machines pick over the entire surface. They
got almost everything, except for scraps. Why do they need us for that?"

"Maybe they don't like getting their hands dirty."

"Yeah, but, I mean, what difference does it make, one gold ring on a skeletal hand, more or less?"
Or one delicate, unbroken china ballerina.

Wal didn't reply right away, but continued feeling his way through the mud. "You know, Major," he
said after a long moment, "one thing you shouldn't forget, one thing none of us should ever
forget, is that these, these machines are not human. They don't think like us. They don't feel
like us. Hell, we don't even know whether or not the things are self-aware."

"It's not enough," Jaime said, "to explain strange behavior just by saying they're alien."

"Mebee. I guess if the clackers want every last gram of refined metal and plastic and stuff like
that recovered, they must have their reasons." The colonel paused, moving his hand in the mud,
then plucked a goblet, a drinking glass miraculously intact save for the snapped-off stem and
base, from the muck. He put the find in his bag before continuing. "Trouble is, we may never be
able to understand those reasons, because they would only make sense to another clacker."

"I just wonder if it s evidence of something we could use. I mean, if they want something that
bad, it suggests weakness...."

"Still thinking about some kind of grand revolution? Up with the humans? Down with machines?"

"Up with the humans!" another voice called softly from close by.

"Easy, lad," Wal said, waving his stump in a placating gesture. "I didn't mean anything byтАФ"

"No, you're right!" The speaker was a young man, probably in his late twenties, though judging the
age of any of the scarred, muddy, and beaten-down slaves in the Celeste pits was pure guesswork by
now. His beard was as long and as ratty looking as Jaime's own. "We have to work together!"

Jaime's brow furrowed as he tried to remember the kid's name. Names were important... the last bit
of individuality the ragged-scarecrow survivors possessed. Rahni. That was it. Rahni Singh. He'd


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talked to him more than once in the slave barracks. He claimed to have been a reporter for
Cloudnews Network before the Killing, though Jaime suspected that the lad had been padding the
truth a little.

"We don't have to take it, anymore!" Rahni said, rising, dripping, his arms outstretched. "What's
the worst they can do, loll us? No! The worst is if we keep on living like, like animals! Like