"Gordon R. Dickson - MX Knows Best" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"You don't trust me," he said, bitterly.
 She didn't answer. He put a finger under her chin and forced it upward so that she had to look at
him.
"You don't trust me," he repeated.
Her face showed the pain in her.
"Oh, Allen!" she said, miserably. Brutally, he let her go and stepped away.
"Wait, Allen!" she cried behind him. "I don't care about me. It's Jasper and the others."
"Why," he demanded, turning back, "what do you think I'd do to them? Snitch to MX on them?"
She did not answer. With a sudden sense of fury and shock, he stared at her.
"You do think that!"
"Oh, Allen! Allen, darling" —she reached out to him, but he stepped back from her—"it's just that
you aren't settled, you aren't stable..."
But he was burning with anger and determined to punish her.
"Thanks for letting me know about it," he said, and left her.

HE MANAGED to cool down as he returned through the several rooms and hallways that separated
him from the sitting room where the others were having their after-dinner coffee. But it seemed he came
in on an argument here, too; the voices of Galt and Frank ceased abruptly as he entered; and all three
men looked up at him from their chairs with the afterwash of strained emotion on their faces.
"What's up?" he asked, taking a cup of coffee from the dispenser and sitting down in a chair that was
grouped with theirs.
"Nothing," said Galt, tightly. "Frank thinks we're going a little too fast with you, that's all."
Allen met the other man's dark, hard eyes.
"That's his privilege," he said, lightly.
"Perhaps," said Galt, his tone smoothing out. "At any rate, it's beside the point, because Jasper and I
outvoted him. Now, Allen I want you to listen with an open mind to what Jasper and Frank have to tell
you, because it's the result of years of work."
Allen looked at him a little curiously, but Galt's long face was heavy with seriousness.
"Go ahead," said Allen, nodding.
Jasper cleared his throat, and Allen turned to look at him. The tension, the very feverishness that had
been in the silver-haired man was gone. He spoke with the easiness of an experienced professor
addressing his seminar.
"I'm the social expert in this business, Allen," he said. "It's been my job to study and understand all
the change and effect which MX has caused in our human society during the last fifty years." He put his
coffee cup down on the arm of his chair and leaned forward.
"You know," he tapped with one slim finger on the arm of the chair, "after the last shouting and
drum-playing was over that celebrated the uniting of this world into a single social unit, the problems
really came along. Personal problems, Allen. People were unsure of how they were supposed to act and
react in this new world they suddenly had. And that's what MX grew out of—a sort of super-advisory
service that was set up at that time."
Allen frowned.
"It's a fact." Jasper nodded emphatically. "There actually was a bureau with branches in every
community to answer questions; you can look it up for yourself in the history books if you want to.
Anyway, of course it got more and more mechanized, or automationized, if you like that word better,
until they finally conceived of MX as a final answer to the problem. You know the rest of it—how people
became more and more dependent on it. But what most people don't realize is the logical basis for the
development."
"Logic?" echoed Allen "I don't see any logic in it at all. It's just plain mental laziness."
"No, no," said Jasper, quite earnestly. "There's the habit angle, to be sure, but there had to be
something beneath and before that. There's a strong, original, logical reason for a man trusting MX's