"Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Ideal" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

"Ah," he rumbled. "Now we go even past the heart of the matter, and return to Isaak here." He jammed a
thumb toward the robot. "Here I will create Roger Bacon's mechanical head. In the skull of this clumsy
creature will rest such intelligence as not even van ManderpootzтАФI should say, as only van
ManderpootzтАФcan conceive. It remains merely to construct my idealizator."

"Your idealizator?"

"Of course. Have I not just proven that thoughts are as real as matter, energy, time, or space? Have I not
just demonstrated that one can be transformed, through the cosmon, into any other? My idealizator is the
means of transforming psychons to quanta, just as, for instance, a Crookes tube or X-ray tube transforms
matter to electrons. I will make your thoughts visible! And not your thoughts as they are in that numb
brain of yours, but in ideal form. Do you see? The psychons of your mind are the same as those from any
other mind, just as all electrons are identical, whether from gold or iron. Yes! Your psychons"тАФhis voice
quaveredтАФ"are identical with those from the mind ofтАФvan Manderpootz!" He paused, shaken.

"Actually?" I gasped.

"Actually. Fewer in number, of course, but identical. Therefore, my idealizator shows your thought
released from the impress of your personality. It shows itтАФideal!"

Well, I was late to the office again.

A week later I thought of van Manderpootz. Tips was on tour somewhere, and I didn't dare take anyone
else out because I'd tried it once before and she'd heard about it. So, with nothing to do, I finally
dropped around to the professor's quarter, found him missing, and eventually located him in his
laboratory at the Physics Building. He was puttering around the table that had once held that damned
subjunctivisor of his, but now it supported an indescribable mess of tubes and tangled wires, and as its
most striking feature, a circular plane mirror etched with a grating of delicately scratched lines.

"Good evening, Dixon," he rumbled.

I echoed his greeting. "What's that?" I asked.

"My idealizator. A rough model, much too clumsy to fit into Isaak's iron skull. I'm just finishing it to try it
out." He turned glittering blue eyes on me. "How fortunate that you're here. It will save the world a
terrible risk."

"A risk?"

"Yes. It is obvious that too long an exposure to the device will extract too many psychons, and leave the
subject's mind in a sort of moronic condition. I was about to accept the risk, but I see now that it would
be woefully unfair to the world to endanger the mind of van Manderpootz. But you are at hand, and will
do very well."

"Oh, no I won't!"

"Come, come!" he said, frowning. "The danger is negligible. In fact, I doubt whether the device will be
able to extract any psychons from your mind. At any rate, you will be perfectly safe for a period of at
least half an hour. I, with a vastly more productive mind, could doubtless stand the strain indefinitely, but