"Murray Leinster - A Logic Named Joe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

"I'm terribly lonesome," says Laurine. "Please make it quick, Ducky! I'll have a drink waiting for you.
Have you ever thought of me?"
 "Yeah," I say, feeble. "Plenty!"
"You darling!" says Laurine. "Here's a kiss to go on with until you get here! Hurry, Ducky!"
Then I sweat! I still don't know nothing about Joe, understand. I cuss out the guys at the tank
because I blame them for this. If Laurine was just another blondeтАФwellтАФwhen it comes to ordinary
blondes I can leave 'em alone or leave 'em alone, either one. A married man gets that way or else. But
Laurine has a look of unquenched enthusiasm that gives a man very strange weak sensations at the back
of his knees. And she'd had four husbands and shot one and got acquitted.
So I punch the keys for the tank technical room, fumbling. And the screen says: "What is your
name?" but I don't want any more. I punch the name of the old guy who's stock clerk in Maintenance.
And the screen gives me some pretty interestin' dopeтАФI never woulda thought the old fella had ever had
that much pepтАФand winds up by mentionin' a unclaimed deposit now amountin' to two hundred eighty
credits in the First National Bank, which he should look into. Then it spiels about the new secretarial
service and gives me the tank at last.
I start to swear at the guy who looks at me. But he says, tired:
"Snap it off, fella. We got troubles an' you're just another. What are the logics doin' now?"
I tell him, and he laughs a hollow laugh.
"A light matter, fella," he says. "A very light matter! We just managed to clamp off all the data plates
that give information on high explosives. The demand for instructions in counterfeiting is increasing minute
by minute. We are also trying to shut off, by main force, the relays that hook in to data plates that just
barely might give advice on the fine points of murder. So if people will only keep busy getting the goods
on each other for a while, maybe we'll get a chance to stop the circuits that are shifting credit-balances
from bank to bank before everybody's bankrupt except the guys who thought of askin' how to get big
bank accounts in a hurry."
"Then," I says hoarse, "shut down the tank! Do somethin'!"
"Shut down the tank?" he says, mirthless. "Does it occur to you, fella, that the tank has been doin' all
the computin' for every business office for years? It's been handlin' the distribution of ninety-four per cent
of all telecast programs, has given out all information on weather, plane schedules, special sales,
employment opportunities and news; has handled all person-to-person contacts over wires and recorded
every business conversation and agreementтАФ Listen, fella! Logics changed civilization. Logics are
civilization! If we shut off logics, we go back to a kind of civilization we have forgotten how to run! I'm
getting hysterical myself and that's why I'm talkin' like this! If my wife finds out my paycheck is thirty
credits a week more than I told her and starts hunting for that redheadтАФ"
He smiles a haggard smile at me and snaps off. And I sit down and put my head in my hands. It's
true. If something had happened back in cave days and they'd hadda stop usin' fireтАФ If they'd hadda
stop usin' steam in the nineteenth century or electricity in the twentiethтАФ It's like that. We got a very
simple civilization. In the nineteen hundreds a man would have to make use of a typewriter, radio,
telephone, teletypewriter, newspaper, reference library, encyclopedias, office files, directories, plus
messenger service and consulting lawyers, chemists, doctors, dieticians, filing clerks, secretariesтАФall to
put down what he wanted to remember an' to tell him what other people had put down that he wanted to
know; to report what he said to somebody else and to report to him what they said back. All we have to
have is logics. Anything we want to know or see or hear, or anybody we want to talk to, we punch keys
on a logic. Shut off logics and everything goes skiddoo. But LaurineтАФ
Somethin' had happened. I still didn't know what it was. Nobody else knows, even yet. What had
happened was Joe. What was the matter with him was that he wanted to work good. All this fuss he was
raisin' was, actual, nothin' but stuff we shoulda thought of ourselves. Directive advice, tellin' us what we
wanted to know to solve a problem, wasn't but a slight extension of logical-integrator service. Figurin' out
a good way to poison a fella's wife was only different in degree from figurin' out a cube root or a guy's
bank balance. It was gettin' the answer to a question. But things was goin' to pot because there was too