"Henry Kuttner - Android" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

 All functional processes had certainly stopped in the robot after decapitation. Bradley had made
sure of that. No respiration, no heartbeat. But somewhere inside, perhaps the metallic brain had been
clicking quietly on its cold way. So cold, Bradley thought irrationally, that not all the synthetic warmth of
the synthetic blood could raise it a fraction of a degree toward human temperature.
Either Court’s body had risen after Bradley left, then, and welded on the head again, or else
others had come to repair the sabotage. Did each robot, in operation, send out the equivalent of a steady
beam of energy which, when it ceased, brought a repair crew to the spot? If that had happened, it was
lucky Bradley had not lingered too long in that room where no murder had been done, though Court’s
head lay so far from his motionless body. . . .
Of course I could be just as crazy as a bedbug, Bradley reminded himself sardonically. Certainly
he would have a hard time convincing anyone he wasn’t. And he would have to convince someone. He
couldn’t go on alone any farther. He had gone too far now to keep this knowledge to himself. By his very
act of proof, by the cutting off of an android head, he had given himself away. Sooner or later they would
track down the identity of the man behind that rubber mask. Before it happened, he would have to pass
this information on.
And there he ran his second terrible risk. The androids would show him no mercy when they
caught him. But how much could he expect from his own kind, when he told his fantastic tale? I’ll end in a
padded cell, he thought, while they go on multiplying outside until—
Until what? Until they outnumber the humans and take over control? Perhaps they already had.
Perhaps they had let him go free after that harmless murder because only he was human now in the whole
civilized world. . . . Perhaps he was quite harmless, really. Perhaps—
“Oh, shut up,” Bradley urged himself impatiently.
“Then at least you don’t suspect me of being a-an android?” Dr. Wallinger asked dourly. He was
slightly nervous, as the result of having sat for ten minutes now with a gun-muzzle pointed unwaveringly at
his stomach. It was, of course, ridiculous that a mysterious rubber-masked figure in a gold-braided cape
whose flare concealed most of its wearer’s body should be sitting here in his library forcing him to listen
to psychotic nonsense.
“You have children,” Bradley said, his voice a little muffled behind the mask. “That was how I
could feel sure about you.”
“Look,” Wallinger .said earnestly, “I’m a nuclear physicist. I think a psychologist could probably
give you more help than—”
“A psychiatrist, you mean?”
“Not at all. Of course not. But-”
“But all the same, you think I’m crazy. All right. I expected you would. I suppose I wouldn’t
have trusted you very far if you hadn’t. That reaction’s normal. But blast you, man, open your mind!
Look at the thing fairly. Isn’t it conceivable that this could have happened?”
Wallinger, with a glance at the gun, put his fingertips together and pursed his lips. “Um,
conceivable. . . . Well, there’s no threshold, naturally. Though 1/100 roentgen per day is considered safe
unless both parents are subject to gamma bombardment. You’ve borne in mind the normal recovery
time? Even under bombardment, you know, the changed genes have less tendency to divide and are
gradually supplanted by normal genes.”
“You aren’t telling me anything new,” Bradley said with forced patience. “My point is that gamma
radiations that would produce mutation in humans have no effect on robots, which are sterile to begin
with. If only androids were sterile it would be simple, but gamma rays induce sterility in humans too. You
have children. You’re all right. But—”
“Hold on,” Wallinger said. “Couldn’t there be android children? If they can make adults, couldn’t
they put together synthetic children too?”
“No. I’ve thought that out carefully. Children grow too fast. They’d have to reorganize the whole
android child every couple of weeks, change all its inward and outward dimensions, work over
everything about it. I think that would call for too much time and effort. They can’t afford it yet, if my