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

things you could do with the gadget. Plenty of other things.
"Hey, counselor," Lew Knight was perched on the corner of his desk, "what are these long
weekends we're taking? You might not make as much money in the law, but does it look right for an
associate of mine to sell magazine subscriptions on the side?"
Sam stuffed his ears mentally against the emery-wheel voice. "I've been writing a book."
"A law book? Weber On Bankruptcy?"
"No, a juvenile. Lew Knight, The Neanderthal Nitwit"
"Won't sell. The title lacks punch. Something like Knights, Knaves and Knobheads is what the
public goes for these days. By the way, Tina tells me you two had some sort of understanding about
New Year's Eve and she doesn't think you'd mind if I took her out instead. I don't think you'd mind
either, but I may be prejudiced. Especially since I have a table reservation at Cigale's where there's
usually less of a crowd of a New Year's Eve than at the Automat."
"I don't mind."
"Good," said Knight approvingly as he moved away. "By the way, I won that case. Nice juicy fee,
too. Thanks for asking."
Tina also wanted to know if he objected to the new arrangements when she brought the mail. Again,
he didn't. Where had he been for over two days? He had been busy, very busy. Something entirely new.
Something important.
She stared down at him as he separated offers of used cars guaranteed not to have been driven over
a quarter of a million miles from caressing reminders that he still owed half the tuition for the last year of
law school and when was he going to pay it?
Came a letter that was neither bill nor ad. Sam's heart momentarily lost interest in the monotonous
round of pumping that was its lot as he stared at a strange postmark: Glunt City, Ohio.
Dear Sir:
There is no firm in Glunt City at the present time bearing any name similar to "Bild-A-Man
Company" nor do we know of any such organization planning to join our little community. We also have
no thoroughfare called "Diagonal"; our north-south streets are named after Indian tribes while our
east-west avenues are listed numerically in multiples of five.
Glunt City is a restricted residential township; we intend to keep it that. Only small retailing and
service establishments are permitted here. If you are interested in building a home in Glunt City and can
furnish proof of white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon ancestry on both sides of your family for fifteen
generations, we would be glad to furnish further information.
Thomas H. Plantagenet, Mayor.


P.S. An airfield for privately owned jet and propeller-driven aircraft is being built outside the city limits.


That was sort of that. He would get no refills on any of the vials and bottles even if he had a loose
slunk or two with which to pay for the stuff. Better go easy on the ma-terial and conserve it as much as
possible. But no disassembling!
Would the "Bild-A-Man Company" begin manufacturing at Glunt City some time in the future when
it had developed into an industrial metropolis against the con-stricted wills of its restricted citizenry? Or
had his package slid from some different track in the human time stream, some era to be born on an
other-dimensional Earth? There would have to be a common origin to both, else why the English
wordage? And could there be a purpose in his having received it, beneficialтАФor otherwise?
Tina had been asking a question. Sam detached his mind from shapeless specula-tion and
considered her quite-the-opposite features.
"So if you'd still like me to go out with you New Year's Eve, all I have to do is tell Lew that my
mother expects to suffer from her gallstones and I have to stay home. Then I think you could buy the