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

VI.

The days passed, and became weeks, then months. During the daytime when her
husband was at the university and her son was at school, Alice would spend most of
her hours with Adam, forcing herself to smile at him and talk to him as she had to
Paul when he was a baby. But when she watched his motions through the transparent
back of his head, his leg motions remained those of attempted walking and
attempted running.
Then, one day when Adam was four months old, things changed as abruptly as the
turning on of a light.
The unrewarding walking and running movements of Adam's little legs ceased. It was
evening, and both Dr. MacNare and his wife were there.
For a few seconds there was no sound or movement from the robot body. Then,
quite deliberately, Adam said, "Ah."
"Ah," Dr. MacNare echoed. "Mm. Mm, ah. Ma-ma."
"Mm," Adam said,
The silence in the study became absolute. The seconds stretched into eternities.
ThenтАУ
"Mm, ah," Adam said. "Mm, ah."
Alice began crying with happiness.
"Mm, ah," Adam said. "Mm, ah. Ma-ma. Mamamama."
Then, as though the effort had been too much for Adam, he went to sleep. Having
achieved the impossible, Adam seemed to lose interest in it. For two days he uttered
nothing more than an occasional involuntary syllable.
"I would call that as much of an achievement as speech itself," Dr. MacNare said to
his wife. "His right front leg has asserted its independence. If each of his other three
legs can do as well, he can control the robot body."
It became obvious that Adam was trying. Though the movements of his body
remained non-purposive, the pauses in those movements became more and more
pregnant with what was obviously mental effort.
During that period there was of course room for argument and speculation about it,
and even a certain amount of humor. Had Adam's right front leg, at the moment of
achieving meaningful speech, suffered a nervous breakdown? What would a
psychiatrist have to say about a white rat that had a nervous breakdown in its right
front leg?
"The worst part about it," Dr. MacNare said to his wife, "is that if he fails to make it
he'll have to be killed. He can't have permanent frustration forced onto him, and, by
now, returning him to his natural state would be even worse."
"And he has such a stout little heart," Alice said. "Sometimes when he looks at me
I'm sure he knows what is happening and he wants me to know he's trying."
When they went to bed that night they were more discouraged than they had ever
been.
Eventually he slept. When the alarm went off, Alice slipped into her robe and went
into the study first, as she always did.
A moment later she was back in the bedroom, shaking her husband's shoulder.
"Joe!" she whispered. "Wake up! Come into the study!"
He leaped out of bed and rushed past her. She caught up with him and pulled him to
a stop.
"Take it easy, Joe," she said. "Don't alarm him."