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

Deftly, he ran his fingers along the pseudo bony spine. The cables should be about here.
Damn expert workmanship; so absolutely perfect an imitation. Cables not apparent even
under close scrutiny. Must be a Wheelright & Carpenter product — they cost more, but look
what good work they do.
He gave up; the false cat had ceased functioning, so evidently the short — if that was what
ailed the thing — had finished off the power supply and basic drive-train. That'll run into
money, he thought pessimistically. Well, the guy evidently hadn't been getting the three-
times-yearly preventive cleaning and lubricating, which made all the difference. Maybe this
would teach the owner — the hard way.
Crawling back in the driver's seat he put the wheel into climb position, buzzed up into the
air once I more, and resumed his flight back to the repair shop.
Anyhow he no longer had to listen to the nerve-wracking wheezing of the construct; he
could relax. Funny, he thought; even though I know rationally it's faked the sound of a false
animal burning out its drive-train and power supply ties my stomach in knots. I wish, he
thought painfully, that I could get another job. If I hadn't failed that IQ test I wouldn't be reduced
to this ignominious task with its attendant emotional by-products. On the other hand, the
synthetic sufferings of false animals didn't bother Milt Borogrove or their boss Hannibal
Sloat. So maybe it's I, John Isidore said to himself. Maybe when you deteriorate back down
the ladder of evolution — as I have, when you sink into the tomb world slough of being a
special— well, best to abandon that line of inquiry. Nothing depressed him more than the
moments in which he contrasted his current mental powers with what he had formerly
possessed. Every day he declined in sagacity and vigor. He and the thousands of other
specials throughout Terra, all of them moving toward the ash heap. Turning into living Ripple.
For company he clicked on the truck's radio and tuned for Buster Friendly's aud show,
which, Eke the TV version, continued twenty-three unbroken warm hours a day . . . the
additional one hour being a religious sign-off, ten minutes of silence, and then a religious
sign-on.
" — glad to have you on the show again," Buster Friendly was saying. "Let's see, Amanda;
it's been two whole days since we've visited with you. Starting on any new pics, dear?"
"Veil, I vuz goink to do a pic yestooday baht vell, dey vanted me to staht ad seven — "
"Seven A.M.?" Buster Friendly broke in.
"Yess, dot's right, Booster; it vuz seven hey hem!" Amanda Werner laughed her famous
laugh, nearly as imitated as Buster's. Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant,
conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few
bucolic so-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like
Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer,
beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated,
as much as seventy hours a week.
How did Buster Friendly find the time to tape both his aud and vid shows? Isidore
wondered. And how did Amanda Werner find time to be a guest every other day, month after
month, year after year? How did they keep talking? They never repeated themselves — not
so far as he could determine. Their remarks, always witty, always new, weren't rehearsed.
Amanda's hair glowed, her eyes glinted, her teeth shone; she never ran down, never became
tired, never found herself at a loss as to a clever retort to Buster's bang-bang string of quips,
jokes, and sharp observations. The Buster Friendly Show, telecast and broadcast over all
Earth via satellite, also poured down on the emigrants of the colony planets. Practice
transmissions beamed to Proxima had been attempted, in case human colonization
extended that far. Had the Salander 3 reached its destination the travelers aboard would
have found the Buster Friendly Show awaiting them. And they would have been glad.
But something about Buster Friendly irritated John Isidore, one specific thing. In subtle,