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

"Well-1-1," she considered. "You'd really be amazed, Commander, if you could see the very latest
performance charts. Of course, there is always that big deficiency, the one activity we've never been able
toтАФ"
"One thing I can't understand," the kid broke in, "why do they have to use corpses! A body's lived
its life, fought its warтАФwhy not leave it alone? I know the Eoti can outbreed us merely by increasing the
number of queens in their flagships; I know that manpower is the biggest single TAF problemтАФbut we've
been synthesizing pro-toplasm for a long, long time now. Why not synthesize the whole damn body, from
toenails to frontal lobe, and turn out real, honest-to-God androids that don't wallop you with the stink of
death when you meet them?"
The little blonde got mad. "Our product does not stink! Cosmetics can now guar-antee that the new
models have even less of a body odor than you, young man! And we do not reactivate or revitalize
corpses, I'll have you know; what we do is reclaim human protoplasm, we reuse worn-out and damaged
human cellular material in the area where the greatest shortages currently occur, military personnel. You
wouldn't talk about corpses, I assure you, if you saw the condition that some of those bodies are in when
they arrive. Why, sometimes in a whole baling packageтАФa baling pack-age contains twenty
casualtiesтАФwe don't find enough to make one good, whole kid-ney. Then we have to take a little
intestinal tissue here and a bit of spleen there, alter them, unite them carefully, activaтАФ"
"That's what I mean. If you go to all that trouble, why not start with real raw material?"
"Like what, for example?" she asked him.
The kid gestured with his black-gloved hands. "Basic elements like carbon, hydro-gen, oxygen and
so on. It would make the whole process a lot cleaner."
"Basic elements have to come from somewhere," I pointed out gently. "You might take your
hydrogen and oxygen from air and water. But where would you get your carbon from?"
"From the same place where the other synthetics manufacturers get itтАФcoal, oil, cellulose."
The receptionist sat back and relaxed, "Those are organic substances," she re-minded him. "If you're
going to use raw material that was once alive, why not use the kind that comes as close as possible to the
end-product you have in mind? It's simple industrial economics, Commander, believe me. The best and
cheapest raw material for the manufacture of soldier surrogates is soldier bodies."
"Sure," the kid said. "Makes sense. There's no other use for dead, old, beaten-up soldier bodies.
Better'n shoving them in the ground where they'd be just waste, pure waste."
Our little blonde chum started to smile in agreement, then shot him an intense look and changed her
mind. She looked very uncertain all of a sudden. When the communicator on her desk buzzed, she bent
over it eagerly.
I watched her with approval. Definitely no fluffhead. Just feminine. I sighed. You see, I figure lots of
civilian things out the wrong way, but only with women is my wrongness an all-the-time proposition.
Proving again that a hell of a lot of peculiar things turn out to have happened for the best.
"Commander," she was saying to the kid. "Would you go to Room 1591? Your crew will be there in
a moment." She turned to me. "And Room 1524 for you, Commander, if you please."
The kid nodded and walked off, very stiff and erect. I waited until the door had closed behind him,
then I leaned over the receptionist. "Wish they'd change the Breed-ing Regulations again," I told her.
"You'd make a damn fine rear-echelon orientation officer. Got more of the feel of the Junkyard from you
than in ten briefing sessions."
She examined my face anxiously, "I hope you mean that, Commander. You see, we're all very
deeply involved in this project. We're extremely proud of the progress the Third District Finishing Plant
has made. We talk about the new developments all the time, everywhereтАФeven in the cafeteria. It didn't
occur to me until too late that you gentlemen mightтАФ" she blushed deep, rich red, the way only a blonde
can blush "тАФmight take what I said personally. I'm sorry if IтАФ"
"Nothing to be sorry about," I assured her. "All you did was talk what they call shop. Like when I
was in the hospital last month and heard two surgeons discussing how to repair a man's arm and making
it sound as if they were going to nail a new arm on an expensive chair. Real interesting, and I learned a