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

Cigale reservations from him cheap."
"Thanks a lot, Tina, but very honestly I don't have the loose cash right now. You and Lew make a
much more logical couple anyhow."
Lew Knight wouldn't have done that. Lew cut throats with carefree zest. But Tina did seem to go
with Lew as a type.
Why? Until Lew had developed a raised eyebrow where Tina was concerned, it had been Sam all
the way. The rest of the office had accepted the fact and moved out of their path. It wasn't only a
question of Lew's greater success and financial well-being: just that Lew had decided he wanted Tina and
had got her.
It hurt. Tina wasn't special; she was no cultural companion, no intellectual equal; but he wanted her.
He liked being with her. She was the woman he desired, rightly or wrongly, whether or not there was a
sound basis to their relationship. He remem-bered his parents before a railway accident had orphaned
him: they were theoreti-cally incompatible, but they had been terribly happy together.
He was still wondering about it the next night as he flipped the pages of "Twinning yourself and your
friends." It would be interesting to twin Tina.
"One for me, one for Lew."
Only the horrible possibility of an error was there. His mannikin had not been perfect: its arms had
been of unequal length. Think of a physically lopsided Tina, something he could never bring himself to
disassemble, limping extraneously through life.
 And then the book warned: "Your constructed twin, though resembling you in every obvious detail,
has not had the slow and guarded maturity you have enjoyed. He or she will not be as stable mentally,
much less able to cope with unusual situa-tions, much more prone to neurosis. Only a professional
carnuplicator, using the finest equipment, can make an exact copy of a human personality. Yours will be
able to live and even reproduce, but cannot ever be accepted as a valid and responsible member of
society."
Well, he could chance that. A little less stability in Tina would hardly be notice-able; it might be more
desirable.
There was a knock. He opened the door, guarding the box from view with his body. His landlady.
"Your door has been locked for the past week, Mr. Weber. That's why the chamber-maid hasn't
cleaned the room. We thought you didn't want anyone inside."
"Yes." He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. "I've been doing some highly
important legal work at home."
"Oh." He sensed a murderous curiosity and changed the subject.
"Why all the fine feathers, Mrs. LipantiтАФNew Year's Eve party?
She smoothed her frilly black dress self-consciously. "Y-yes. My sister and her husband came in
from Springfield today and we were going to make a night of it. Only...only the girl who was supposed to
come over and mind their baby just phoned and said she isn't feeling well. So I guess we won't go unless
somebody else, I mean unless we can get someone else to take care...I mean, somebody who doesn't
have a previous engagement and who wouldn'tтАФ" Her voice trailed away in assumed em-barrassment as
she realized the favor was already asked.
Well, after all, he wasn't doing anything tonight. And she had been remarkably pleasant those times
when he had to operate on the basis of "Of course I'll have the rest of the rent in a day or so." But why
did any one of the Earth's two billion humans, when in the possession of an unpleasant buck, pass it
automatically to Sam Weber?
Then he remembered Chapter IV on babies and other small humans. Since the night when he had
separated the mannikin from its constituent parts, he'd been run-ning through the manual as an intellectual
exercise. He didn't feel quite up to mak-ing some weird error on a small human. But twinning wasn't
supposed to be as difficult.
Only by Gog and by Magog, by Aesculapius the Physician and Kildare the Doctor, he would not
disassemble this time. There must be other methods of disposal pos-sible in a large city on a dark night.