"Clifford D.Simak. All the traps of Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора

And not a one of them from the last six hundred years, thought Richard
Daniel, staring at them one by one, that he had not known.

There, to the right of the fireplace, old Rufus Andrew Barrington, who
had been a judge some two hundred years ago. And to the right of Rufus,
Johnson Joseph Barrington, who had headed up that old lost dream of mankind,
the Bureau of Paranormal Research. There, beyond the door that led out to
the porch, was the scowling pirate face of Danley Barrington, who had first
built the family fortune.

And many others - administrator, adventurer, corporation chief. All good
men and true.

But this was at an end. The family had run out.

Slowly Richard Daniel began his last tour of the house - the family room
with its cluttered living space, the den with its old mementos, the library
and its rows of ancient books, the dining hall in which the crystal and the
china shone and sparkled, the kitchen gleaming with the copper and aluminum
and the stainless steel, and the bedrooms on the second floor, each of them
with its landmarks of former occupants. And finally, the bedroom where old
Aunt Hortense had finally died, at long last closing out the line of
Barringtons.

The empty dwelling held a not-quite-haunted quality, the aura of a house
that waited for the old gay life to take up once again. But it was a false
aura. All the portraits, all the china and the silverware, everything within
the house would be sold at public auction to satisfy the debts. The rooms
would be stripped and the possessions would be scattered and, as a last
indignity, the house itself be sold.

Even he, himself, Richard Daniel thought, for he was chattel, too. He
was there with all the rest of it, the final item on the inventory.

Except that what they planned to do with him was worse than simple sale.
For he would be changed before he was offered up for sale. No one would be
interested in putting up good money for him as he stood. And, besides, there
was the law - the law that said no robot could legally have continuation of
a single life greater than a hundred years.

And he had lived in a single life six times a hundred years. He had gone
to see a lawyer and the lawyer had been sympathetic, but had held forth no
hope.

"Technically," he had told Richard Daniel in his short, clipped lawyer
voice, "you are at this moment much in violation of the statute. I
completely fail to see how your family got away with it."

"They liked old things," said Richard Daniel. "And, besides, I was very
seldom seen. I stayed mostly in the house. I seldom ventured out."