"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.2.-.Transition.Of.Titus.Crow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

sparks that formed a flaming tail, I plunged, a meteorite, tightening my mental controls of the time-clock, but it was already too late. The bulk of the world below rushed up to embrace the clock, to flatten it to its bosom of mountains and plains.
I threw my hands up before my face, at least, I think I tried to ...
I became aware of a vast room filled with a variety of machines and obscure electrical mechanisms for all the world reminiscent - no, the very duplicate - of some mad scientist's laboratory out of those old horror films of the thirties and forties. Over the tiled floor of this tremendous laboratory, in and about and all around the towering consoles of incredibly complicated instruments, trundled a squat, rubber-wheeled robot of multiple appendages and faceted, electrical eyes. It paused every now and then at one bank of dials and levers or another to make speedy but delicate adjustments. The whole scene was soundless and I seemed to view it through some distorting element, like faintly frosted glass. Either that or my eyes were not functioning properly.
My mind, too, was very foggy. Snatches of memory were there, I recall, from all my years of youth and middle age, but much was missing. For example, while I knew dimly who I was, I did not know where or how I came to be where I was. My awareness, which had seemed to be instantaneous, was incomplete, as if I were a machine, suddenly switched on but riot yet warmed to the task of existing.
Then it dawned on me that I was hardly aware at all. I could not feel my body, could not close my eyes or even blink. I felt no sensations whatever. Where, for instance, was the tightening and slackening of the chest that goes hand in hand with breathing? Where was the sense of

flowing blood, the pulse, which I personally have always been able to feel or hear in my head? But I was given very little time to ponder these things. In any case, such questions would all soon be answered.
All at once, as far as I could make out, having paused to observe the readings on a metal mushroom of gleaming dials and flashing lights, the robot spun quickly about while its faceted eyes all swiveled in my direction. The thing looked at me. Then it rushed toward me, its rubber wheels blurring over the tiles while the upper appendages of its metal body became suddenly galvanized into fantastic tremblings. Three of its five eyes flashed through an astonishing range of color combinations.
The thing came right up to me until, achieving some sort of perspective and clarity of vision at last, I could see that it stood almost man-sized. It reached out an appendage toward my eyes, a rubber-tipped claw of sorts. As this tool began to close over my right eye I tried to scream, to turn and run, to throw up a protective arm before my face, and nothing happened! My brain was pouring commands to every part of my body but -
My body? Had I been capable of laughter then indeed, at that exact moment of time, I might have laughed hysterically, though I think it more likely that I would have screamed. For as the mechanical claw steadied itself to close gently on my right eye and shut out sight in that orb, so my left eye witnessed this action reflected in the many facets of the robot's own five crystal lenses. It also saw the vat of electrolytic fluids bubbling and the thing the vat contained: a thing like a flattened, wrinkled, elongated bladder. It saw the glowing plastic tubes that protruded from the grayly pulsing mass in the vat, and also the naked organs with which those tubes were tipped. In short I saw myself, the mortal remains of Titus Crow: a bruin in a bowl, with stalked, lidless, bloodshot eyes!

The human mind, despite its circumstances, or perhaps because of them, is mercifully equipped with a means to shut out sensations and sights which are completely unbearable. Happily what remained of my brain in that robot laboratory upon an alien world still retained this facility. A blackness engulfed me in which I was to know no dreams but only a long drawn out longing for death rather than the ultimate horror and madness of the thing in the vat.
2 Robot World
So began my transition, de Marigny.
My next awakening was one of longer duration but no less horrible, though this time the climax did not cause my mind to shut down, seeking safety in unconscious oblivion. As it happened, the shutting down was done for me, automatically. But in many other ways that second awakening was very different from the first. For one thing, the scene in the great laboratory was now accompanied by sounds, the sounds one might expect to hear at the heart of a giant computer: a mechanical clicking, as of a thousand typewriter keys; a whirring and fluttering, similar to the shuffle of programming cards; the hiss and sputter of controlled electrical energies and the distant, subterranean thrummings and vibrations of great engines.
When the robot - custodian? - of the place saw that I was once again conscious, it approached in far less agitation than before and, astonishingly, spoke to me, in a neutral but not unpleasant English! 'I see that you are aware.' Two of its eyes swiveled down to peer steadily at something below my sphere of vision, then joined the other three in staring at me in a manner more than merely

mechanical. I detected an air - I could swear it - of something approaching pride in the metal scientist, for such the robot later proved to be.
'Yes, you are aware, and you hear me, but do not try to answer. You will not have a voice until much later. At that time we will be able to talk, but until then I must rely upon the intelligence imparted to me by your friend here. He is guiding me in your reconstruction and we are making slow but steady progress/
My friend? I found that with a little effort I could move my eyes, making them follow the direction clearly indicated by a movement of one of the robot's upper appendages. There in a cleared space, its back to the wall of the laboratory, stood my time-clock. It was undamaged, as far as I could tell, and as I saw it many memories rushed in to fill the blank spaces in my mind, particularly the memory of falling in the clock like a meteorite to the surface of a gray world!
But what had the robot meant by calling the clock my friend? I was not to find that out for some time.
'I am told,' the robot continued, its voice remarkably human if hollow, 'that life-forms such as yourself suffer certain disturbances of mind originating in diseased or damaged members or organs of your bodies, and that such disturbances are known collectively as pain. This condition, I am led to believe, is as distressing to you as rust or lack of lubrication would be to me; indeed more distressing, for you are incapable of disconnecting the offending member or organ or of switching it off from your brain while the necessary corrections are performed. Moreover, I am assured that this pain is quite capable of bringing about a general debility in your entire system. Since it is important that you are not further damaged during this period of your reconstruction, I would like to know if you are now experiencing pain. If so I will switch

you off immediately until I can find and remove the source of such distress. So that I may do these things, you may reply in the affirmative by moving your eyes to the right, or in the negative by moving them to the left. Are you in pain?'
Immediately, and with less effort this time, I moved my eyes to the left, then back again to stare at the robot. I could feel no pain whatever. Indeed I could barely feel my eyes, while the rest of my body remained a mere vacancy. (All this time I had kept my eyes averted from any shiny surface in which I might see unmentionable things reflected.) But now the robot's upper appendages were trembling and quivering; its faceted eyes were swiveling here and there like those of some freak, hybrid chameleon; its voice, when at last it spoke again, was full of what might only be called, well, if not emotion, certainly an unprecedented machine excitement!
'You . . . you see, you hear and you reason! You . . . you really are!' For a moment longer this weird metal creature exulted, then said, 'But there remains much to be done, and once more I must consult your friend before continuing my work. It were better, I think, if I switched you off.' He - already I thought of the robot as a male entity - reached out an appendage toward an area to one side of me and to the rear of my sphere of vision, pulling into view a large mirror on wheels. 'But before I do I would like you to see how we have progressed, your friend and I!'
I tried to close my eyes then but found that I could not do so. The attempt was an automatic reflex which, if I had been able to bear the sight revealed by the mirror, if 1 had looked closer, I would have seen to be impossible anyway. One cannot close eyes that have no lids! Instead I remembered the robot's words of a minute or so earlier and simply moved my eyes, all too slowly, to the right.

'Pain!' The robot actually seemed to gasp, recognizing my signal on the instant. Then he turned and sped rapidly away to operate a red switch in the center of a nearby console. Once again darkness descended, but not before I had fearfully, in dreadful but irresistible curiosity, turned my eyes back to the mirror.
Oh, yes, much had been done. Work upon my reconstruction was truly progressing:
My eyes were attached to my brain as before (the latter was now much more brain-shaped), but now they had been embedded in nubs of living flesh, in rudimentary sockets. There were twin, raw, wrinkled orifices, one at each side of the brain, with metallic cones attached to them by slim copper wires: my ears, I supposed them to be. There was an esophagus of flexible plastic, supported at the back by the first bones - or were they, too, plastic? - of a spine, which in turn had hanging before it a black, baglike thing that I took to be my stomach. Lungs, liver and kidneys were there, all artificial and none seeming to be working, all loosely attached to one another in a network of gristly filaments of synthetic protoplasm or plastic. And where my heart should have been, there hung a cluster of connected plastic balls, five of them spaced evenly about a shining metal nucleus. The whole visceral obscenity, with the exception of the stalked eyes and the metallic cones, swam or floated in a large transparent tube of yellow fluids.
And so my transition progressed. Periodically I would be made to awaken, to be shown my latest physical acquisitions, the most recent steps in my path toward completion. It seemed to me that my robot super-surgeon worked lovingly, and with tremendous pride in his craft. I watched myself grow in his mirror, saw my body gradually taking shape. Step by step I was brought back to full existence in that laboratory, and I marveled as each bone

- many of them plastic duplicates, for most of the originals were ruined beyond redemption - was made to fit into place within my semi-synthetic body. I saw my limbs take shape, and felt memories waking as my damaged brain healed itself or was repaired. And always and ever the robot talked to me, explaining how all this had come about, how it was that my jigsaw puzzle being was in process of reconstruction in his laboratory.
It seemed that my disastrous arrival upon the surface of the gray world had been witnessed by the robot, who at the time had been on a lone interplanetary expedition in search of life! His own planet, a world of subterranean hives and corridors, utterly devoid of organic life, was fifth from the sun in a system of six worlds and eleven moons. That was where I was now, on the fifth planet, but the gray world whose surface had so rudely received me had been the second from the sun, 680 millions of miles away toward the system's center. The robot had transported all of my parts and the clock, too, to his home world. There he had commenced . . .
. . . but in any case it had been my good fortune - no, let me not understate the matter. It had been a fantastically fortunate coincidence - not only that the robot had seen me crash to the surface of that gray planet, but also that he had been perhaps the one and only mechanism of his race who could ever have . . .
... T3RE, however, possibly by virtue of his years of random thought and his inbuilt capacity for endless physical and theoretical experimentation, had developed his own ideas with regard to organic life. His theory of the origin of species was that robots were not there in the beginning, but that they had been created originally by and in the service of superior organic life-forms. In short, I suppose you could call my friend a mechanical Darwin!
Eventually there came a time when I could no longer

be completely switched off, when only my conscious mind would respond to T3RE's control. This simply meant that my brain was whole again. Moreover, my id must be intact - I could hope, I could dream! And during those periods when the robot scientist labored his labor of love - and in the case of T3RE I am sure that so utterly unmechanical a phrase is not at all out of order - when of necessity my surface consciousness must be closed down to spare me the embarrassment of pain, then indeed I did
dream.
As often as not the dream was recurrent, but though the main setting was known to me of old, this time it came to me that I only dreamed, that these subconscious sensations were merely pictures out of my own mind. They were not, as had been their prototype, of telepathic intensity. There was of course a vast crystal hall and a gossamer-clad goddess who cried crystal tears, while the rumbling thoughts of some being great beyond words fumbled to comfort her grief-stricken mind, and misty drapes trembled before a huge, alcoved throne upon which the Eminence himself stirred in emotional agitation. Such dreams were not good.
Then came that long-awaited awakening when I found myself with a working voice (I had already had several that did not work) and at last I was able to put to T3RE all of those questions I had saved up during my period of enforced muteness. Of course, it was a great moment for the robot, too, for at last he had a genuine, self-attestable specimen, albeit a reconstructed one of sentient organic life. Soon he would be able to ...
'. . . as 1 myself am - was - organic,' I told him. 'We
called them presidents and prime ministers and dictators
and kings. They were all human beings. At least here you
arc all equal.'
'An equality leading to the utmost boredom, at least

until 1 found you!' he answered. 'And make no mistake, you are still organic, the greater part of you. But tell me more about this world of human beings. Were there no robots, no computers?' He was vastly interested.