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

many answers being given to too many questions.
One of the logics in Maintenance lights up. I go over, weary, to answer it. I punch the answer key.
Laurine says:
"Ducky!"
It's the same hotel room. There's two glasses on the table with drinks in them. One is for me.
Laurine's got on some kinda frothy hangin'-around-the-house-with-the-boy-friend outfit that automatic
makes you strain your eyes to see if you actual see what you think. Laurine looks at me enthusiastic.
"Ducky!" says Laurine. "I'm lonesome! Why haven't you come up?"
"I . . . been busy," I say, strangling slightly.
"Pooh!" says Laurine. "Listen, Ducky! Do you remember how much in love we used to be?"
I gulp.
"Are you doin' anything this evening?" says Laurine.
I gulp again, because she is smiling at me in a way that a single man would maybe get dizzy, but it
gives a old married man like me cold chills. When a dame looks at you possessiveтАФ
"Ducky!" says Laurine, impulsive. "I was so mean to you! Let's get married!"
Desperation gives me a voice.
"I . . . got married," I tell her, hoarse.
Laurine blinks. Then she says, courageous:
"Poor boy! But we'll get you outta that! Only it would be nice if we could be married today. Now we
can only be engaged!"
"I . . . can'tтАФ"
"I'll call up your wife," says Laurine, happy, "and have a talk with her. You must have a code signal
for your logic, darling. I tried to ring your house and nothтАФ"
Click! That's my logic turned off. I turned it off. And I feel faint all over. I got nervous prostration. I
got combat fatigue. I got anything you like. I got cold feet.
I beat it outta Maintenance, yellin' to somebody I got a emergency call. I'm gonna get out in a
Maintenance car an' cruise around until it's plausible to go home. Then I'm gonna take the wife an' kids
an' beat it for somewheres that Laurine won't ever find me. I don't wanna be' fifth in Laurine's series of
husbands and maybe the second one she shoots in a moment of boredom. I got experience of blondes. I
got experience of Laurine! And I'm scared to death!
I beat it out into traffic in the Maintenance car. There was a disconnected logic in the back, ready to
substitute for one that hadda burned-out coil or something that it was easier to switch and fix back in the
Maintenance shop. I drove crazy but automatic. It was kinda ironic, if you think of it. I was goin' hoopla
over a strictly personal problem, while civilization was crackin' up all around me because other people
were havin' their personal problems solved as fast as they could state 'em. It is a matter of record that
part of the Mid-Western Electric research guys had been workin' on cold electron-emission for thirty
years, to make vacuum tubes that wouldn't need a power source to heat the filament. And one of those
fellas was intrigued by the "Ask your logic" flash. He asked how to get cold emission of electrons. And
the logic integrates a few squintillion facts on the physics data plates and tells him. Just as casual as it told
somebody over in the Fourth Ward how to serve left-over soup in a new attractive way, and somebody
else on Mason Street how to dispose of a torso that somebody had left careless in his cellar after ceasing
to use same.
Laurine wouldn't never have found me if it hadn't been for this new logics service. But now that it was
startedтАФ Zowie! She'd shot one husband and got acquitted. Suppose she got impatient because I was
still married an' asked logics service how to get me free an' in a spot where I'd have to marry her by 8:30
p.m.? It woulda told her! Just like it told that woman out in the suburbs how to make sure her husband
wouldn't run around no more. Br-r-r-r! An' like it told that kid how to find some buried treasure.
Remember? He was happy totin' home the gold reserve of the Hanoverian Bank and Trust Company
when they caught on to it. The logic had told him how to make some kinda machine that nobody has
been able to figure how it works even yet, only they guess it dodges around a couple extra dimensions. If