"Robert Sheckley. The Day The Aliens Came (англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

down. He took a deep breath and said, very quietly, "I'm sorry."
"That's better," Mr. Tate said. "I will not be shouted at. However, if you are
reasonable, I can be reasonable too. Now, what's the trouble?"
"The trouble?" Simon's voice started to lift. He controlled it and said, "She
loves me."
"Of course."
"Then how can you separate us?"
"What has one thing got to do with another?" Mr. Tate asked. "Love is a
delightful interlude, a relaxation, good for the intellect, for the ego, for the
hormone balance, and for the skin tone. But one would hardly wish to continue
loving, would one?"
"I would," Simon said. "This love was special, unique - "
"They all are," Mr. Tate said. "But as you know, they are all produced in the
same way."
"What?"
"Surely you know something about the mechanics of love production?"
"No," Simon said. "I thought it was - natural."
Mr. Tate shook his head. "We gave up natural selection centuries ago, shortly
after the Mechanical Revolution. It was too slow, and commercially unfeasible.
Why bother with it, when we can produce any feeling at will by conditioning and
proper stimulation of certain brain centers? The result? Penny, completely in
love with you! Your own bias, which we calculated, in favor of her particular
somatype, made it complete. We always throw in a the dark sea-beach, the lunatic
moon, the pallid dawn - "
"Then she could have been made to love anyone," Simon said slowly.
"Could have been brought to love anyone," Mr. Tate corrected.
"Oh, lord, how did she get into this horrible work?" Simon asked.
"She came in and signed a contract in the usual way," Tate said. "It pays very
well. And at the termination of the lease, we return her original personality -
untouched! But why do you call the work horrible? There's nothing reprehensible
about love."
"It wasn't love!" Simon cried.
"But it was! The genuine article! Unbiased scientific firms have made
qualitative tests of it, in comparison with the natural thing. In every case,
our love tested out to more depth, passion, fervor and scope."
Simon shut his eyes tightly, opened them and said, "Listen to me. I don't care
about your scientific tests. I love her, she loves me, and that's all that
counts. Let me speak to her! I want to marry her!"
Mr. Tate wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Come, come, young man! You wouldn't
want to marry a girl like that! But if it's marriage you're after, we deal in
that, too. I can arrange an idyllic and nearly spontaneous love-match with a
guaranteed, government-inspected virgin - "
"No! I love Penny! At least let me speak to her!"
"That will be quite impossible," Mr. Tate said.
"Why?"
Mr. Tate pushed a button on his desk. "Why do you think? We've wiped out the
previous indoctrination. Penny is now in love with someone else."
And the Simon understood. He had realized that even now Penny was looking at
another man with that passion he had known, feeling for another man that
complete and bottomless love that unbiased scientific firms had shone to be so