"Raymond Z. Gallun - Dawn of the Demigods Or, People Minus X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gallun Raymond Z)

 Granger rose lamely but gamely. "You seem to be impromptu acquaintances
of this Abel Freeman," he said to Ed and his companions. "He has feelings, he
thinks; he's even a good person. In some ways he's just an interesting rogue
of the nineteenth century. But he's a device. And unless something is done,
we'll be as obsolete as the dinosaur. Our science serves us no longer. It
serves other masters, nearer to its meaning. Others than I have realized it.
In every two houses this side of the world there is already an average of one
of these creatures of vitaplasm. Is Earth to be kept for us, and for the joy
of being human; or are we to become -- basically, and no matter how humanized
-- mere synthetic mechanisms, trading our birthright for a few mechanical
advantages?"
The shot from the Midas Touch pistol was drawing a crowd. An
approaching police siren wailed.
Suddenly Granger fixed his eyes on Ed in surprise and recognition.
"Dukas," he said. "Let me see -- Edward Dukas. At a time when the world was
more reasonably watchful, your house was under surveillance. As a possible
means of contacting one Mitchell Prell -- who had his hand in what once
happened to us, and perhaps in what is happening now. How does it feel, Dukas,
to be so close to such a celebrity? Ah, maybe you're shy!"
Flattening out Granger again would have been no useful answer to Ed's
memories of bitter wrongs. He smiled briefly at him.
"Come see me some evening when you don't feel so much like making a
monkey of someone, because someone has just made a monkey out of you," he
said.
Then he hustled his companions away. "There's no good in getting
involved in public confusion," he told them. "Anyhow not till we talk things
out and get them straight."
Ten minutes later they were in a quiet restaurant.
"Abel Freeman," Les Payten said. "He was quite a surprise at that."
"Rather, more of a pointing out of facts we already knew," Barbara
remarked.
"The old robot-peril come true," Les said pensively. "Humanity
threatened to be replaced, not by clanking giants of metal, simple and
melodramatic, but by beings much more refined -- though they are perhaps much
the same thing. My own father is one of them."
"There's truth in what Granger said," Ed pointed out. "There's that
dread of being shouldered out of the way by something strange and tougher. I
can feel it too. Granger can certainly make use of it, preaching. He's clever.
But he's the worst kind of fool."
"Yeah, hammering on the detonator cap of the entire Earth," Les said,
breathing softly.
The three friends, sitting around a table under soft lights and in
pleasant surroundings, looked at one another. The food before them was good,
the music was quiet and soothing. But at eye level, in the air where their
glances passed, seemed to hang all the elements of the complex civilization to
which they belonged: its luxury and beauty, its climbing technology that could
conquer death and reach for other solar systems, but the by the same or
related forces could dissolve worlds, especially if mankind, at the top, lost
control of itself.
"I thought things would go along smoothly and reasonably," Barbara