"William Tenn - Child's Play" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

Which was an idea: he made a few oysters. The shells weren't hard enough, and he couldn't quite
screw his courage up to the eating point, but they were most undeni-ably bivalves. If he cared to perfect
his technique, his food problem would be solved.
The manual was fairly easy to follow and profusely illustrated with pictures that expanded into
solidity as the page was opened. Very little was taken for granted; in-volved explanations followed
simpler ones. Only the allusions were occasionally obscureтАФ"This is the principle used in the
phanphophlink toys," "When your teeth are next yokekkled or demortoned, think of the Bacterium
cyanogenum and the humble part it plays," "If you have a rubicular mannikin around the house, you
needn't bother with the chapter on mannikins."
After a brief search had convinced Sam that whatever else he now had in his apart-ment he didn't
have a rubicular mannikin, he felt justified in turning to the chapter on mannikins. He had conquered
completely this feeling of being Pop playing with Junior's toy train: already he had done more than the
world's top biologists ever dreamed of for the next generation and what might not lie aheadтАФwhat
problems might he not yet solve?
"Never forget that mannikins are constructed for one purpose and one purpose only." I won't, Sam
promised. "Whether they are sanitary mannikins, tailoring man-nikins, printing mannikins or even
sunevviarry mannikins, they are each constructed with one operation of a given process in view. When
you make a mannikin that is capable of more than one function, you are committing a crime so serious as
to be punishable by public admonition."
"To construct an elementary mannikinтАФ"
It was very difficult. Three times he tore down developing monstrosities and be-gan anew. It wasn't
till Sunday afternoon that the mannikin was completeтАФor rather, incomplete.
Long arms it hadтАФalthough by an error, one was slightly longer than the otherтАФa faceless head and
a trunk. No legs. No eyes or ears, no organs of reproduction. It lay on his bed and gurgled out of the red
rim of a mouth that was supposed to serve both for ingress and excretion of food. It waved the long
arms, designed for some one simple operation not yet invented, in slow circles.
Sam, watching it, decided that life could be as ugly as an open field latrine in midsummer.
 He had to disassemble it. Its lengthтАФthree feet from almost boneless fingers to tapering, sealed-off
trunkтАФprecluded the use of the tiny disassembleator with which he had taken apart the oysters and
miscellaneous small creations. There was a bright yellow notice on the large diassembleator,
howeverтАФ"To be used only under the direct supervision of a Census Keeper. Call formula A76 or
unstable your id."
"Formula A76" meant about as much as "sunevviarry," and Sam decided his id was already
sufficiently unstabled, thank you. He'd have to make out without a Cen-sus Keeper. The big
disassembleator probably used the same general principles as the small one.
He clamped it to a bedpost and adjusted the focus. He snapped the switch set in the smooth
underside.
Five minutes later the mannikin was a bright, gooey mess on his bed.
The large disassembleator, Sam was convinced as he tidied his room, did require the supervision of
a Census Keeper. Some sort of keeper anyway. He rescued as many of the legless creature's
constituents as he could, although he doubted he'd be using the set for the next fifty years or so. He
certainly wouldn't ever use the disassembleator again; much less spectacular and disagreeable to shove
the whole thing into a meat grinder and crank the handle as it squashed inside.
As he locked the door behind him on his way to a gentle binge, he made a mental note to purchase
some fresh sheets the next morning. He'd have to sleep on the floor tonight.
Wrist-deep in Somerset & Ojack minutiae, Sam was conscious of Lew Knight's stares and Tina's
puzzled glances. If they only knew, he exulted! But Tina would prob-ably just think it "marr-vell-ouss!"
and Lew Knight might make some crack like "Hey! Kid Frankenstein himself." Come to think of it,
though, Lew would probably have worked out some method of duplicating, to a limited extent, the
contents of the Bild-A-Man set and marketing it commercially. Whereas heтАФwell, there were other