"Eric Frank Russell - Mechanical Mice2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

MECHANICAL MICE
Astounding Science Fiction January by Maurice A. Hugi
(Eric Frank Russell, 1905-1978)

It's asking for trouble to fool around with the unknown. Burman did it! Now there are quite a
lot of people who hate like the very devil anything that clicks, ticks, emits whirring sounds, or
generally behaves like an asthmatic alarm clock. They've got mechanophobia. Dan Burman
gave it to them.
Who hasn't heard of the Burman Bullfrog Battery? The same chap! He puzzled it out from
first to last and topped it with his now world-famous slogan: "Power in Your Pocket." It was
no mean feat to concoct a thing the size of a cigarette packet that would pour out a hundred
times as much energy as its most efficient competitor. Burman differed from everyone else
in thinking it a mean feat.
Burman looked me over very carefully, then said, "When that technical journal sent you
around to see me twelve years ago, you listened sympathetically. You didn't treat me as if I
were an idle dreamer or a congenital idiot. You gave me a decent write-up and started all
the publicity that eventually made me much money."
"Not because I loved you," I assured him, "but because I was honestly convinced that your
battery was good."
"Maybe." He studied me in a way that conveyed he was anxious to get something off his
chest. "We've been pretty pally since that time. We've filled in some idle hours together, and
I feel that you're the one of my few friends to whom I can make a seemingly silly confession."
"Go ahead," I encouraged. We had been pretty pally, as he'd said. It was merely that we
liked each other, found each other congenial. He was a clever chap, Burman, but there was
nothing of the pedantic professor about him. Fortyish, normal, neat, he might have been a
fashionable dentist to judge by appearances.
"Bill," he said, very seriously, "I didn't invent that damn battery."
"No?"
"No!" he confirmed. "I pinched the idea. What makes it madder is that I wasn't quite sure of
what I was stealing and, crazier still, I don't know from whence I stole it."
"Which is as plain as a pikestaff," I commented.
'That's nothing. After twelve years of careful, exacting work I've built something else. It must
be the most compli┬мcated thing in creation." He banged a fist on his knee, and his voice
rose complainingly. "And now that I've done it, I don't know what I've done."
"Surely when an inventor experiments he knows what he's doing?"
"Not me!" Burman was amusingly lugubrious. "I've invent┬мed only one thing in my life, and
that was more by accident than by good judgment." He perked up. "But that one thing was
the key to a million notions. It gave me the battery. It has nearly given me things of greater
importance. On several occasions it has nearly, but not quite, placed within my inadequate
hands and half-understanding mind plans that would alter this world far beyond your
conception." Leaning forward to lend emphasis to his speech, he said, "Now it has given
me a mystery that has cost me twelve years of work and a nice sum of money. I finished it
last night. I don't know what the devil it is."
"Perhaps if I had a look at itтАФ"
"Just what I'd like you to do." He switched rapidly to mounting enthusiasm. "It's a beautiful
job of work, even though I say so myself. Bet you that you can't say what it is, or what it's
supposed to do."
"Assuming it can do something," I put in.
"Yes," he agreed. "But I'm positive it has a function of some sort." Getting up, he opened a
door. "Come along."