"Dick, Philip K - Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

There are no owls, he started to say. Or so we've been told. Sidney's, he thought; they list
it in their catalogue as extinct: the tiny, precise type, the E, again and again throughout the
catalogue. As the girl walked ahead of him he checked to see, and he was right. Sidney's
never makes a mistake, he said to himself. We know that, too. What else can we depend
on?
"It's artificial," he said, with sudden realization; his disappointment welled up keen and
intense.
"No." She smiled and he saw that she had small even teeth, as white as her eyes and hair
were black.
"But Sidney's listing," he said, trying to show her the catalogue. To prove it to her.
The girl said, "We don't buy from Sidney's or from any animal dealer. All our purchases
are from private parties and the prices we pay aren't reported." She added, "Also we have
our own naturalists; they're now working up in Canada. There's still a good deal of forest left,
comparatively speaking, anyhow. Enough for small animals and once in a while a bird."
For a long time he stood gazing at the owl, who dozed on its perch. A thousand thoughts
came into his mind, thoughts about the war, about the days when owls had fallen from the
sky; he remembered how in his childhood it had been discovered that species upon species
had become extinct and how the 'papes had reported it each day — foxes one morning,
badgers the next, until people had stopped reading the perpetual animal obits.
He thought, too, about his need for a real animal; within him an actual hatred once more
manifested itself toward his electric sheep, which he had to tend, had to care about, as if it
lived. The tyranny of an object, he thought. It doesn't know I exist. Like the androids, it had no
ability to appreciate the existence of another. He had never thought of this before, the
similarity between an electric animal and an andy. The electric animal, he pondered, could
be considered a subform of the other, a kind of vastly inferior robot. Or, conversely, the
android could be regarded as a highly developed, evolved version of the ersatz animal. Both
viewpoints repelled him.
"If you sold your owl," he said to the girl Rachael Rosen, "how much would you want for it,
and how much of that down?"
"We would never sell our owl." She scrutinized him with a mixture of pleasure and pity; or
so he read her expression. "And even if we sold it, you couldn't possibly pay the price. What
kind of animal do you have at home?"
"A sheep," he said. "A black-faced Suffolk ewe."
"Well, then you should be happy."
"I'm happy," he answered. "It's just that I always wanted an owl, even back before they all
dropped dead." He corrected himself. "All but yours."
Rachael said, "Our present crash program and overall planning call for us to obtain an
additional owl which can mate with Scrappy." She indicated the owl dozing on its perch; it
had briefly opened both eyes, yellow slits which healed over as the owl settled back down to
resume its slumber. Its chest rose conspicuously and fell, as if the owl, in its hypnotic state,
had sighed.
Breaking away from the sight — k made absolute bitterness blend throughout his prior
reaction of awe and yearning he said, "I'd like to test out the selection, now. Can we go
downstairs? "
"My uncle took the call from your superior and by now he probably has — "
"You're a family?" Rick broke in. "A corporation this large is a family affair?"
Continuing her sentence, Rachael said, "Uncle Eldon should have an android group and a
control group set up by now. So let's go." She strode toward the elevator, hands again thrust
violently in the pockets of her coat; she did not look back, and he hesitated for a moment,
feeling annoyance, before he at last trailed after her.