"Rog Phillips - Rat in the Skull" - читать интересную книгу автора (Phillips Rog)

TV, much to the relief of both his parents.
In the garage workshop Dr. MacNare made parts for the robot, and kept a couple of
innocent projects going which he worked on when his son Paul evinced his periodic
curiosity about what was going on.
Spring became summer. For six weeks Paul went to Scout camp, and during those
six weeks Dr. MacNare reorganized the entire research project in line with what it
would be in the fall. A decision was made to use only white rats from then on. The
rest of the animals were sold to a pet store, and a system for automatically feeding,
watering, and keeping the cases clean was installed in preparation for a much needed
two weeks' vacation at the cabin.
When the time came to go, they had to tear themselves away from their work by an
effort of will тАУ aided by the realization that they could get little done with Paul
underfoot.
September came all too soon. By mid-September both Dr. MacNare and his wife felt
they were on the home stretch. Parts of the robot were going together and being
tested, the female white rats were being bred at the rate of one a week so that when
the robot was completed there would be a supply of newborn rats on hand.
October came, and passed. The robot was finished, but there were minor defects in
it that had to be corrected.
"Adam," Dr. MacNare said one day, "will have to wear this robot all his life. It has to
be just right."
And with each litter of baby rats Alice said, "I wonder which one is Adam."
They talked of Adam often now, speculating on what he would be like. It was
almost, they decided, as though Adam were their second child.
And finally, on November 2, 1956, everything was ready. Adam would be born in
the next litter, due in about three days.
The amount of work that had gone into preparation for the great moment is beyond
conception. Four file cabinet drawers were filled with notes. By actual measurement
seventeen feet of shelf space was filled with books on the thousand and one subjects
that had to be mastered. The robot itself was a masterpiece of engineering that would
have done credit to the research staff of a watch manufacturer. The vernier
adjustments alone, used to compensate daily for the rat's growth, had eight
patentable features.
And the skills that had had to be acquired! Alice, who had never before had a
hypodermic syringe in her hand, could now inject a precisely measured amount of
opiate into the tiny body of a baby rat with calm confidence in her skill.
After such monumental preparation, the great moment itself was anticlimactic. While
the mother of Adam was still preoccupied with the birth of the remainder of the
brood, Adam, a pink helpless thing about the size of a little finger, was picked up
and transferred to the head of the robot.
His tiny feet, which he would never know existed, were fastened with gentle care to
the four control rods. His tiny head was thrust into a helmet attached to a
pivot-mounted optical system, ending in the lenses that served the robot for eyes.
And finally a transparent plastic cover contoured to the shape of the back of a
human head was fastened in place. Through it his feeble attempts at movement could
be easily observed.
Thus, Dr. MacNare's Adam was born into his body, and the time of the completion
of his birth was one-thirty in the afternoon on the fifth day of November, 1956.
In the ensuing half-hour all the cages of rats were removed from the study, the floor
was scrubbed, and deodorizers were sprayed, so that no slightest trace of Adam's