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

'Oh, yes, there were computers. There were robots, too, though none so advanced as you,' I told him.
'And the machines existed in companionship with you human beings?'
'They were' - I was forced to admit it - 'man's slaves. Men made them.'
'Slaves? They were not companions? Men made them?'
'They were machines, as you are a machine, but they were simply not individual enough to be companions. They were heading that way, though. Certainly I knew men who loved their automobiles!'
'Ah! I see. They were of a low order, these robots, as are the T6's and T7's.' He turned from me where I hung in my complicated life-support tube. For a moment his crystal eyes stared across the laboratory at my time-clock, then he turned back to me. 'And yet your robot, the time-clock that brought you across time and space, is of an exceptionally high order, higher, I would say, even than a T2. It surprises me that he deigns to talk to me at all.'
'Oh, yes, the clock is a high-order machine, all right,' I answered. 'But it was made by organic beings of such a high order that by comparison I am not much better than those lowly, single-celled organisms and primitive animals which you tell me you have found on distant moons.'
At this revelation T3RE grew very excited. 'Then my theory may very well be correct! I have long suspected that it is a basically illogical presumption that we robots were here in the beginning. We have no sexual reproduc-tory apparatus; we are incapable of generation by fission, though that is certainly the nearest we get to organic reproduction; we devise new models for specialized tasks,



of course, but these have to be assembled from components which are, as separate units, insensate. Who, then, built the first robot?'
'We have a similar theological problem on my world,' I answered, as T3RE turned from me, switching off my conscious mind as he trundled almost absently away to ponder, no doubt, his last question. 'But there on Earth,' my subconscious mind continued to itself, 'there we ask ourselves who made God!'
It was not until very much later, during a period of wakefulness when T3RE had once more called me up from the netherworlds of subconscious mind to his robot laboratory, that I thought to ask him how long he had worked on me. The answer was not immediately forthcoming as we had to work out a satisfactory chronological system. It was based on the speed of light, in units of the length of time it took light to race from the primary of T3RE's system to his home planet. Finally I discovered I had been in the robot's care for no less than forty-seven years. Of all that time I had spent perhaps one hour awake, and of that hour all of fifteen minutes had been taken up in mutual conversation!
It had taken T3RE ten years merely to duplicate his first living red corpuscle. My nervous system had taken much longer, was still in process of reconstruction. My brain, too, had been a major problem: not its repair and assembly but the replacement of lost memories and complex nerve and motor areas. In this T3RE had relied solely upon my friend the time-clock.
What I had never known - what I could never have guessed - was that during my journeys in the clock through time and space, not only had I been one with the clock's psyche but the clock had recorded in its own memory banks all of my memories and thoughts! I have

never discovered just why this was done; I fancy that it is normal procedure, that time-clocks such as mine always retain copies of the psychic identities and memories of their users.
At any rate, T3RE had fed these recordings back into my reconstructed brain using an infinitely delicate electronic system devised by the clock and himself. Now my body was almost complete, a composite but nearly perfect Frankenstein built mainly of synthetic parts, but yet retaining all of its original passions and humors, hopes and aspirations, pleasures and fears.
And in another twenty-three years, perhaps three or four hours of consciousness, I was ready. Ready for T3RE's final tests, when he would link up in a series of operations all of my millions of synthetic circuits and give me back my body. Then I would be lifted free of my life-support tube complete again as a man, a man like no other.
'When you have undergone all your tests,' he told me toward the end, 'when you are ready to recommence your journey, for your friend the time-clock tells me you are destined to complete a great journey, then I will . . .'
. . .'And what of yourself?' I asked him. 'Your future?'
'I do not matter. I have no God. My emotions are based mainly upon your own, which I tried to duplicate electronically within myself before you first regained consciousness. The clock explained these emotions to me. It was not a very successful experiment: I cannot even dream! You are superior, you and your clock, both of you. He can dream; he has many memories, even those of many beings before your time, he tells me. He has, yes, a psyche, an id. I do not matter, no - but you? - both of you must go on, to your journey's end.'

3 The Transition of Titus Crow
When I awakened next it was to a sort of chaos in the laboratory of T3RE. Other T3's were everywhere. Many of them moved about the laboratory, three or four clustered around my tube. At least half of them were almost indistinguishable from T3RE himself, while others had different arrangements of appendages and were obviously constructed to perform different tasks. Finally the robot directly in front of me spoke and I recognized
him.
'That was your first test!' T3RE told me. 'You woke up yourself, without stimulation. Is there pain?'
'No, but there is - I have feelings! I can feel my arms and legs, my fingers. Is it finished?'
'It is finished,' cried T3RE in a sort of mechanical delight. He was a robot for sure, but in that instant he seemed more human than any real person I had ever known. He was whirring nervously on his wheels back and forth in front of me, his upper appendages waving, his five faceted eyes all aswivel; he acted for all the world like some excited schoolboy with his first model airplane, about to propel it on its maiden flight. And, more amazingly, his enthusiasm seemed to have infected his
visitors!
'I am communicating with them on radio wavelengths,' he explained. 'They cannot speak in your tongue, indeed they have no tongues as such. Nor had I before I built into myself the necessary components. Even so, they are not as efficient as your organic vocal chords. Now we must see if the rest of you is equally efficient!'
I felt myself being lifted, tried to turn my head to see

what was going on, and my head turned! A sort of dazed disbelief enveloped me then; I felt quite drunk. At last I was back in control of my body! But what degree of control did I have? In an instant I was trembling in the grip of many emotions, and fear was not the least of them. Often before I had compared myself with the Frankenstein monster of fiction, but what if I should prove to be no less a monster? A stiff-limbed, mechanically jointed, uncoordinated mass of synthetic muscle and plastic parts?
A harness of some soft material lifted me from the tube and set me slowly down on the tiled floor of the laboratory. Though my feet touched the floor, and I actually felt them touch it, the harness lowered me no further. 'Is something wrong?' I inquired of T3RE.
'I will lower you slowly,' he answered, 'to give your body a chance to orientate. If anything goes wrong, tell me.' He moved a lever on a nearby console and the harness lowered me a few more inches.
Now I braced my feet against the floor and stood upright. I shrugged my shoulders free of the harness. I lifted my hands and looked at them, then tried a spontaneous whoop of joy and relief - and nothing came!
'My . . . my voice!' I gasped. 'What. . . what is wrong with my-?'
'You must first learn to breathe if you wish to expel air violently,' T3RE told me. 'You have lungs, but from now on they will only be of use to you in speaking. I decided long ago that yours was a most inefficient circulatory system, and that - '
'Are you trying to tell me that I don't need air?' I cut him off.
'Only for the activation of your vocal cords,' he answered. 'But come, this is nothing to worry about. In fact your new system is far more efficient. You will be

able to exist unprotected in all but the most corrosive atmospheres. I thought this would be better for you, in view of the journey you have ahead. Come, now, there are other, more important things to be tested. Walk, run, jump - try out your body! I need to see you function. Breathe if you wish, if it seems normal to you. The atmosphere in here has been adapted to suit your old constitution; see what your taste buds think of it. And then I have food for you, and drink: synthetic proteins and carbohydrates extracted from the oils of the earth!'
I sucked air into my lungs, tasted it, expelled it - and suddenly I exulted! Strength filled my body, I could feel it: an abundance of vitality, the sure knowledge that I was a new man, quite literally! I turned to the great mirror that stood beside my now empty tube and stared at
myself.
Oh, the man who stood there, reflected in that mirror, was Titus Crow, little doubt of that, but he was a younger Titus Crow, revitalized. And he was complete! I knew that, just staring at myself. And yet I was more than complete. Not perfect, not by any means, for despite the wonderful blend of synthetics and flesh and metals and bone and plastics and hair that I now was, despite all this I was still human. And human beings are far from perfect. But I was a damn sight nearer perfect than had been the old man who fled the Tind'losi Hounds and smashed himself to pulp on the surface of a dead gray world!
'T3RE,' I finally said, 'you have worked a miracle. Many miracles. There is no need at all to test this body of mine; I know that it is an excellent body. And there is no way for me to thank you for what you have done.'
'You have thanked me enough,' he answered, 'in that I now know that my theory ... all these colleagues of mine: they, too, are now aware that . . .'