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

shuttle outside the door, a second a yard behind it. The first had a short length of brass
chain attached to a tiny hook projecting from its rear. The nose cap of the second had
opened fanwise, like an iris dia┬мphragm, and a pair of jointed metal arms were folded
inside, hugging a medium-sized diamond. It looked as if they'd been about to enter when
Burman destroyed the big machine.
Picking them up, I brought them in. Their complete inac┬мtivity, though they were undamaged,
suggested that they had been controlled by the big machine and had drawn their mo┬мtive
power from it. If so, then we'd solved our problem sim┬мply, and by destroying the one had
destroyed the lot.
Burman got his breath back and began to talk.

He said, "The Robot Mother! That's what I madeтАФa duplicate of the Robot Mother. I didn't
realize it, but I was pa┬мtiently building the most dangerous thing in creation, a thing that is a
terrible menace because it shares with mankind the ability to propagate. Thank Heaven we
stopped it in time!"
"So," I remarked, remembering that he claimed to have got it from the extreme future, "that's
the eventual master, or mistress, of Earth. A dismal prospect for humanity, eh?"
"Not necessarily. I don't know just how far I got, but I've an idea it was so tremendously
distant in the future that Earth had become sterile from humanity's viewpoint. Maybe we'd
emigrated to somewhere else in the cosmos, leaving our semi-intelligent slave machines to
fight for existence or die. They foughtтАФand survived."
"And then wangle things to try to alter the past in their fa┬мvor," I suggested.
"No, I don't think so." Burman had become much calmer by now. "I don't think it was a
dastardly attempt so much as an interesting experiment. The whole affair was damned in
advance because success would have meant an impossible paradox. There are no robots
in the next century, nor any knowledge of them. Therefore the intruders in this time must have
been wiped out and forgotten."
"Which means," I pointed out, "that you must not only have destroyed the machine, but also
all your drawings, all your notes, as well as the psychophone, leaving nothing but a few
strange events and a story for me to tell."
"ExactlyтАФI shall destroy everything. I've been thinking over the whole affair, and it's not until
now I've understood that the psychophone can never be of the slightest use to me. It permits
me to discover or invent only those things that his┬мtory has decreed I shall invent, and which,
therefore, I shall find with or without the contraption. I can't play tricks with history, past or
future."
"Humph!" I couldn't find any flaw in his reasoning. "Did you notice," I went on, "the touch of
bee psychology in our antagonists? You built the hive, and from it emerged workers,
warriors, and"тАФI indicated the dead sauntererтАФ"one drone."
"Yes," he said, lugubriously. "And I'm thinking of the honeyтАФeighty watches! Not to mention
any other items the late patters may report, plus any claims for slaughtered cats. Good thing
I'm wealthy."
"Nobody knows you've anything to do with those incidents. You can pay secretly if you wish."
"I shall," he declared.
"Well," I went on, cheerfully, "all's well that ends well. Thank goodness we've got rid of what
we brought upon ourselves."
With a sigh of relief, I strolled toward the door. A high whine of midget motors drew my
startled attention downward. While Burman and I stared aghast, a golden shuttle slid easily
through one of the rat holes, sensed the death of the Robot Mother and scooted back
through the other hole before I could stop it.
If Burman had been shaken before, he was doubly so now. He came over to the door, stared