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

" — ho ho, folks! Zip click zip! Time for a brief note on tomorrow's weather; first the
Eastern seaboard of the U.S.A. Mongoose satellite reports that fallout will be especially pro-
nounced toward noon and then will taper off. So all you dear folks who'll be venturing out
ought to wait until afternoon, eh? And speaking of waiting, it's now only ten hours 'til that big
piece of news, my special exposй! Tell your friends to watch! I'm revealing something that'll
amaze you. Now, you might guess that it's just the usual — "
As Isidore knocked on the apartment door the television died immediately into nonbeing. It
had not merely become silent; it had stopped existing, scared into its grave by his knock.
He sensed, behind the closed door, the presence of life, beyond that of the TV. His
straining faculties manufactured or else picked up a haunted, tongueless fear, by someone
retreating from him, someone blown back to the farthest wall of the apartment in an attempt
to evade him.
"Hey," he called. "I live upstairs. I heard your TV. Let's meet; okay?" He waited, listening.
No sound and no motion; his words had not pried the person loose. "I brought you a cube of
margarine," he said, standing close to the door in an effort to speak through its thickness.
"My name's J. R. Isidore and I work for the well-known animal vet Mr. Hannibal Sloat; you've
heard of him. I'm reputable; I have a job. I drive Mr. Sloat's truck."
The door, meagerly, opened and he saw within the apartment a fragmented and
misaligned shrinking figure, a girl who cringed and slunk away and yet held onto the door, as
if for physical support. Fear made her seem ill; it distorted her body lines, made her appear
as if someone had broken her and then, with malice, patched her together badly. Her eyes,
enormous, glazed over fixedly as she attempted to smile.
He said, with sudden understanding, "You thought no one lived in this building. You thought
it was abandoned."
Nodding, the girl whispered, "Yes."
"But," Isidore said, "it's good to have neighbors. Heck, until you came along I didn't have
any." And that was no fun, god knew.
"You're the only one?" the girl asked. "In this building besides me?" She seemed less
timid, now; her body straightened and with her hand she smoothed her dark hair. Now he
saw that she had a nice figure, although small, and nice eyes markedly established by long
black lashes. Caught by surprise, the girl wore pajama bottoms and nothing more. And as he
looked past her he perceived a room in disorder. Suitcases lay here and there, opened,
their contents half spilled onto the littered floor. But this was natural; she had barely arrived.
"I'm the only one besides you," Isidore said. "And I won't bother you." He felt glum; his
offering, possessing the quality of an authentic old pre-war ritual, had not been accepted. In
fact the girl did even seem aware of it. Or maybe she did not understand what a cube of
margarine was for. He had that intuition; the girl seemed more bewildered than anything
else. Out of her depth and helplessly floating in now-receding circles of fear. "Good old
Buster," he said, trying to reduce her rigid postural stance. "You like him? I watch him every
morning and then again at night when I get home; I watch him while I'm eating dinner and
then his late late show until I go to bed. At least until my TV set broke."
"Who — " the girl began and then broke off; she bit her lip as if savagely angry. Evidently
at herself.
"Buster Friendly," he explained. It seemed odd to him that this girl had never heard of
Earth's most knee-slapping TV comic. "Where did you come here from? " he asked
curiously.
"I don't see that it matters." She shot a swift glance upward at him. Something that she
saw seemed to ease her concern; her body noticeably relaxed. "I'll be glad to receive com-
pany," she said, "later on when I'm more moved in. Right now, of course, it's out of the
question."