"William Tenn - Down Among the Dead Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

women were still serving in administrative positions on the fighting perimeters.
On the other hand, I realized, at least two of my brothers might still be alive. But I'd made no
attempt to contact them since getting my dotted Y. So I guessed I felt the same way as the kidтАФwhich
was hardly surprising.
"Are you from Sweden?" the blonde girl was asking. "My second husband was born in Sweden.
Maybe you knew himтАФSven Nossen? He had a lot of relatives in Stockholm."
The kid screwed up his eyes as if he was thinking real hard. You know, running down a list of all the
Swedes in Stockholm. Finally, he shook his head. "No, can't say that I do. But I wasn't out of Goteborg
very much before I was called up."
She clucked sympathetically at his provincialism. The baby-faced blonde of clas-sic anecdote. A
real dumb kid. And yetтАФthere were lots of very clever, high-pressure cuties around the inner planets
these days who had to content themselves with a one-fifth interest in some abysmal slob who boasted the
barest modicum of maleness. Or a certificate from the local sperm bank. Blondie here was on her third
full husband.
Maybe, I thought, if I were looking for a wife myself, this is what I'd pick to take the stink of
scrambler rays out of my nose and the yammer-yammer-yammer of Irvingles out of my ears. Maybe I'd
want somebody nice and simple to come home to from one of those complicated skirmishes with the Eoti
where you spend most of your conscious thoughts trying to figure out just what battle rhythm the filthy
insects are using this time. Maybe, if I were going to get married, I'd find a pretty fluffhead like this more
generally desirable thanтАФoh, well. Maybe. Considered as a problem in psychology it was interesting.
I noticed she was talking to me. "You've never had a crew of this type before either, have you,
Commander?"
"Zombies, you mean? No, not yet, I'm happy to say."
She made a disapproving pout with her mouth. It was fully as cute as her approv-ing pouts. "We do
not like that word."
"All right, blobs then."
"We don't like blтАФthat word either. You are talking about human beings like your-self,
Commander. Very much like yourself."
I began to get sore fast, just the way the kid had out in the hall. Then I realized she didn't mean
anything by it. She didn't know. What the hellтАФit wasn't on our orders. I relaxed. "You tell me. What do
you call them here?"
The blonde sat up stiffly. "We refer to them as soldier surrogates. The epithet 'zom-bie' was used to
describe the obsolete Model 21 which went out of production over five years ago. You will be supplied
with individuals based on Models 705 and 706, which are practically perfect. In fact, in some
respectsтАФ"
 "No bluish skin? No slow-motion sleepwalking?"
She shook her head violently, Her eyes were lit up. Evidently she'd digested all the promotional
literature. Not such a fluffhead, after all; no great mind, but her hus-bands had evidently had someone to
talk to in between times. She rattled on enthu-siastically: "The cyanosis was the result of bad blood
oxygenation; blood was our second most difficult tissue reconstruction problem, The nervous system was
the hardest. Even though the blood cells are usually in the poorest shape of all by the time the bodies
arrive, we can now turn out a very serviceable rebuilt heart. But, let there be the teeniest battle damage to
the brain or spine and you have to start right from scratch. And then the troubles in reconstitution! My
cousin Lorna works in Neural Align-ment and she tells me all you need to make is just one wrong
connectionтАФyou know how it is, Commander, at the end of the day your eyes are tired and you're kind
of watching the clockтАФjust one wrong connection, and the reflexes in the finished individual turn out to
be so bad that they just have to send him down to the third floor and begin all over again. But you don't
have to worry about that. Since Model 663, we've been using the two-team inspection system in Neural
Alignment. And the 700 seriesтАФoh, they've just been wonderful."
"That good, eh? Better than the old-fashioned mother's son type?"