"Judith Merril - Beyond Human Ken" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

Esther shrugged. "I won't, if you insist. But Doc Kuntz might give you a line on exactly what you have
here. Hit him with the extraordinary and he'll bring five thousand years of scientific banalties to bear on it
for dissection purposes. Tell me, do you notice any other change in your land since you were here last?"

The physicist stood just outside the door and swept his eyes over the tangle of bush that seasoned
the glinting patches of swamp and outcropped rock. Sick orange from the beginning sunset colored the
land weirdly, making the desolate subarctic plains look like the backdrop to a dying age. A young, cold
wind sprang up and hurried at them, delighting in its own vigor.
"Well, over there for example. A patch of green grass ex-tending for about a quarter mile. I
remember thinking how much like a newly mowed lawn it looked, and how out of place it was in the
middle of all this marsh. Over there, where you now see that stretch of absolutely blank brown soil. Of
course, it could have withered and died in a week. Winter's com-ing on."
"Hm-m-m." She stepped back and looked up at the green roof of the cottage which harmonized so
unostentatiously with the green shutters and door and the sturdy white of the walls. "Do you think. . ."
Paul leaped away from the door and stood rubbing his shoul-der. He giggled awkwardly. "Seemed
as if the post reached over and began rubbing against me. Didn't frighten me exactlyтАФjust sort of
startling."
He smiled. "I'd say this robot whatever-it-is likes me. Almost a mechanical caress."
Esther nodded, her lips set, but said nothing until they were in the car again. "You know, Paul," she
whispered as they got under way, "I have the intriguing thought that this house of yours isn't a robot at all.
I think it's thoroughly alive."
He widened his eyes at her. Then he pushed his glasses hard against his forehead and chuckled.
"Well, that's what they say, Es: It takes a heap of livin' to make a house a home!"
They rode on silently in the seeping darkness, trying to de-velop reasons and causes, but finding
nothing worthy of reason-able discussion. It was only when they clattered onto the cordu-roy outskirts of
Little Fermi that Paul stated abruptly: "I'm going to get some beans and coffee and spend the night in my
living house. Breckinbridge won't need me until that shipment of cadmium rods comes in from Edmonton;
that means I can spend tonight and all day tomorrow finding out just what I've got."
His companion started to object, then tossed her head. "I can't stop you. But be careful, or poor
Caroline may have to marry a young buck from the Harvard Law School."
"Don't worry," he boasted. "I'm pretty sure I can make that house jump through hoops if I ask it. And
maybe, if I get bored, I'll ask it!"
He looked up Breckinbridge in the clapboard barracks and got a day's leave of absence from him.
Then there was a discus-sion with the cooks who were rapidly persuaded to part with miscellaneous
packaged foodstuffs. A hurriedly composed tele-gram to one Caroline Hart of Boston, Massachusetts,
and he was thumping his way bark to the house behind headlights that were willing to split the darkness
but were carefully noncom-mittal about the road.

It wasn't till Paul saw the house clutching the top of the hill that he realized how easily he would have
accepted the fact of its disappearance.
Parking the runabout on the slope so that its lights illumined the way to the top, he pushed the side
back and prepared to get out.
The door of the house opened. A dark carpet spilled out and humped down the hill to his feet.
Regular, sharp protuberances along its length made it a perfect staircase. A definite rosy glow exuded
from the protuberances, lighting his way.
"That's really rolling out the welcome mat," Paul commented as he locked the ignition in the car and
started up.
He couldn't help jumping a bit when, passing through the vestibule, the walls bulged out slightly and
touched him gently on either side. But there was such an impression of friendliness in the gesture and they
moved back in place so swiftly, that there was no logical reason for nervousness.