"H. Beam Piper - Day of the Moron" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

"Oh, poking around inside the reactor with telemetered scanners and remote-control equipment. When I
left, he had a gang pulling out graphite blocks with RC-tongs. We probably won't get a chance to work
on it much before thirteen-hundred tomorrow." He unzipped a bulky brief case he had brought in under
his arm and dumped papers onto his desk. "I still have this stuff to get straightened out, too."

"Had anything to eat? Then call the cafeteria and have them send up three dinners. Dr. Rives is eating
here, too. Find out what she wants; I want pork chops."

"Uh-huh; Li'l Abner Melroy; po'k chops unless otherwise specified." Keating got up and went out into
the middle office. As he opened the door. Melroy could hear a recording of somebody being given a
word-association test.




Half an hour later, when the food arrived, they spread their table on a relatively clear desk in the middle
office. Doris Rives had finished evaluating the completed tests; after dinner, she intended going over the
written portions of the uncompleted tests.

"How'd the finished tests come out?" Melroy asked her.

"Better than I'd expected. Only two washouts," she replied. "Harvey Burris and Julius Koffler."

"Oh, no!" Keating wailed. "The I.F.A.W. steward, and the loudest-mouthed I-know-my-rights boy on
the job!"

"Well, wasn't that to be expected?" Melroy asked. "If you'd seen the act those two put onтАФ"

"They're both inherently stupid, infantile, and deficient in reasoning ability and judgment," Doris said.
"Koffler is a typical adolescent problem-child show-off type, and Burris is an almost perfect
twelve-year-old schoolyard bully. They both have inferiority complexes long enough to step on. If the
purpose of this test is what I'm led to believe it is, I can't, in professional good conscience, recommend
anything but that you get rid of both of them."

"What Bob's getting at is that they're the very ones who can claim, with the best show of plausibility, that
the test is just a pretext to fire them for union activities," Melroy explained. "And the worst of it is, they're
the only ones."

"Maybe we can scrub out a couple more on the written tests alone. Then they'll have company," Keating
suggested.

"No, I can't do that." Doris was firm on the point. "The written part of the test was solely for ability to
reason logically. Just among the three of us, I know some university professors who'd flunk on that. But if
the rest of the tests show stability, sense of responsibility, good judgment, and a tendency to think before
acting, the subject can be classified as a safe and reliable workman."

"Well, then, let's don't say anything till we have the tests all finished," Keating proposed.

"No!" Melroy cried. "Every minute those two are on the job, there's a chance they may do something