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

He'd think of something.
"I'd be glad to watch the baby for a few hours." He started down the hall to antici-pate her polite
protest. "Don't have a date tonight myself. No, don't mention it, Mrs. Lipanti. Glad to do it."
In the landlady's apartment, her nervous sister briefed him doubtfully. "And that's the only time she
cries in a low, steady way so if you move fast there won't be much damage done. Not much, anyway."
He saw them to the door. "I'll be fast enough," he assured the mother. "Just so I get a hint."
Mrs. Lipanti paused at the door. "Did I tell you about the man who was asking after you this
afternoon?"
Again? "A sort of tall, old man in a long, black overcoat?"
"With the most frightening way of staring into your face and talking under his breath. Do you know
him?"
"Not exactly. What did he want?"
"Well, he asked if there was a Sam Weaver living here who was a lawyer and had been spending
most of his time in his room for the past week. I told him we had a Sam WeberтАФyour first name is
Sam?тАФwho answered to that description, but that the last Weaver had moved out over a year ago. He
just looked at me for a while and said, 'Weaver, WeberтАФthey might have made an error,' and walked
out without so much as a goodbye or excuse-me. Not what I call a polite gentleman."
Thoughtfully Sam walked back to the child. Strange how sharp a mental picture he had formed of
this man! Possibly because the two women who had met him thus far had been very impressionable,
although to hear their stories the impression was there to be received.
He doubted there was any mistake: the man had been looking for him on both occa-sions; his
knowledge of Sam's vacation from foolscap this past week proved that. It did seem as if he weren't
interested in meeting him until some moot point of identity should be established beyond the least shadow
of a doubt. Something of a legal mind, that.
The whole affair centered around the "Bild-A-Man" set, he was positive. This skulk-ing investigation
hadn't started until after the gift from 2353 had been deliveredтАФand Sam had started using it.
But till the character in the long, black overcoat paddled up to Sam Weber person-ally and stated
his business, there wasn't very much he could do about it.
Sam went upstairs for his Junior Biocalibrator.
He propped the manual open against the side of the bed and switched the instru-ment on to full
scanning power. The infant gurgled thickly as the calibrator was rolled slowly over its fat body and a
section of metal tape unwound from the slot with, accord-ing to the manual, a completely detailed
physiological description.
It was detailed. Sam gasped as the tape, running through the enlarging viewer, gave information on
the child for which a pediatrician would have taken out at least three mortgages on his immortal soul.
Thyroid capacity, chromosome quality, cerebral content. All broken down into neat subheads of data for
construction purposes. Rate of skull expansion in minutes for the next ten hours; rate of cartilage
transforma-tion; changes in hormone secretions while active and at rest.
This was a blueprint; it was like taking canons from a baby.
Sam left the child to a puzzled contemplation of its navel and sped upstairs. With the tape as a guide,
he clipped sections of the molds into the required smaller sizes. Then, almost before he knew it
consciously, he was constructing a small human.
He was amazed at the ease with which he worked. Skill was evidently acquired in this game; the
mannikin had been much harder to put together. The matter of dupli-cation and working from an
informational tape simplified his problems, though.
The child took form under his eyes.
He was finished just an hour and a half after he had taken his first measurements. All except the
vitalizing.
A moment's pause, here. The ugly prospect of disassembling stopped him for a moment, but he
shook it off. He had to see how well he had done the job. If this child could breathe, what was not