"William Morrison - The Sack" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

world were finally passed over and he was made Custodian of the Sack. Siebling
was a short, stocky man whose one weakness was self-deprecation. He had carried
out one difficult assign-ment after another and allowed other men to take the credit.
But this job was not one for a blowhard, and those in charge of making the
appointment knew it. For once they looked beyond credit and superficial reputation,
and chose an individual they disliked somewhat but trusted absolutely. It was one of
the most effective tributes to honesty and ability ever devised.
The Sack, as Siebling learned from seeing it daily, rarely deviated from the form in
which it had made its first appearanceтАФa rocky, grayish lump that roughly
resembled a sack of potatoes. It had no features, and there was nothing, when it was
not being asked questions, to indicate that it had life. It ate rarelyтАФonce in a
thousand years, it said, when left to itself; once a week when it was pressed into
steady use. It ate or moved by fashioning a suitable pseudopod and stretching the
thing out in whatever way it pleased. When it had attained its objective, the
pseudopod was withdrawn into the main body again and the creature became once
more a potato sack.
It turned out later that the name "Sack" was well chosen from another point of
view, in addition to that of appearance. For the Sack was stuffed with infor-mation,
and beyond that, with wisdom. There were many doubters at first, and some of them
retained their doubts to the very end, just as some people remained convinced
hundreds of years after Columbus that the Earth was flat. But those who saw and
heard the Sack had no doubts at all. They tended, if anything, to go too far in the
other direction, and to believe that the Sack knew everything. This, of course, was
untrue.
It was the official function of the Sack, established by a series of Interplanetary
acts, to answer questions. The first questions, as we have seen, were asked
acci-dentally, by Captain Ganko. Later they were asked purposefully, but with a
purpose that was itself random, and a few politicians managed to acquire
considerable wealth before the Government put a stop to the leak of information,
and tried to have the questions asked in a more scientific and logical manner.
Question time was rationed for months in advance, and sold at what was, all
things considered, a ridicu-lously low rateтАФa mere hundred thousand credits a
minute. It was this unrestricted sale of time that led to the first great government
squabble.
It was the unexpected failure of the Sack to answer what must have been to a
mind of its ability an easy question that led to the second blowup, which was fierce
enough to be called a crisis. A total of a hundred and twenty questioners, each of
whom had paid his hundred thousand, raised a howl that could be heard on every
planet, and there was a legislative investigation, at which Siebling testified and all the
conflicts were aired.
He had left an assistant in charge of the Sack, and now, as he sat before the
Senatorial Committee, he twisted uncomfortably in front of the battery of cameras.
Senator Horrigan, his chief interrogator, was a bluff, florid, loud-mouthed politician
who had been able to imbue him with a feeling of guilt even as he told his name, age,
and length of government service.
"It is your duty to see to it that the Sack is maintained in proper condition for
answering questions, is it not, Mr. Siebling?" demanded Senator Horrigan.
"Yes, sir."
"Then why was it incapable of answering the questioners in question? These
gentlemen had honestly paid their moneyтАФa hundred thousand credits each. It was