"Gordon R. Dickson - The Monkey Wrench" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

word from you for six years and then suddenly you’re knocking at my door here in the hinterland.”

“I came on impulse,” said Cary. “It’s the prime rule of my life. Always act on impulse, Burke. It puts the
sparkle in existence.”

“And leads you to an early grave,” Burke supplemented.

“If you have the wrong impulses,” said Cary. “But then if you get sudden urges to jump off cliffs or play
Russian Roulette, you’re too stupid to live, anyway.”

“Cary,” said Burke heavily, “you’re a shallow thinker.”

“And you’re a stodgy one,” grinned Cary. “Suppose you quit insulting me and tell me something about
yourself. What’s this hermit’s existence of yours like? What do you do?”

“What do I do?” repeated Burke. “I work.”

“But just how?” Cary said, settling himself cosily back into his chair. “Do you send up balloons? Catch
snow in a pail to find how much fell? Take sights on the stars? Or what?”

Burke shook his head at him and smiled tolerantly.

“Well, if you insist on my talking to entertain you,” he answered, “I don’t do anything so picturesque. I
just sit at a desk and prepare weather data for transmission to the Weather Centre down at Capital
City.”

“Aha!” Cary said, waggling a forefinger at him in reproof. “I’ve got you now. You’ve been lying down
on the job. You’re the only one here; so if you don’t take observations, who does?”

“The machine does, of course. These stations have a Brain to do that.”

“That’s worse,” Cary answered. “You’ve been sitting here warm and comfortable while some poor little
Brain scurries around outside in the snow and does all your work for you.”

“As a matter of fact you’re closer to the truth than you think; and it wouldn’t do you any harm to learn a
few things about the mechanical miracles that let you lead a happy ignorant life. Some wonderful things
have been done lately in the way of equipping these stations.”

Cary smiled mockingly.

“I mean it,” Burke went on, his face lighting. “The Brain we’ve got here now is the last word in that type
of installation. As a matter of fact, it was just put in recently – until a few months back we had to work
with a job that was just a collector and computer. That is, it collected the weather data around this station
and presented it to you. Then you had to take it and prepare it for the calculator, which would chew on it
for a while and then pass you back results which you again had to prepare for transmission downstairs to
the Centre.”
 “Fatiguing, I’m sure,” murmured Cary, reaching for the drink place handily on the table beside his chair.
Burke ignored him, caught up in his own appreciation of the mechanical development about which he was
talking.