"Frederik Pohl - The Man Who Ate The World (v1.1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

Private Place; the only robots that had both an inside- and outside-the-castle existence were the two bodyguards of his youth, Davey Crockett and Long John Silver.
"That," said Carrick, "must be the Private Place."
It was decidedly a gingerbread castle. The "gingerbread" was stonework, gargoyles and columns; there were a moat and a drawbridge, and there were robot guards with crooked little rifles, wearing scarlet tunics and fur shakos three feet tall. The drawbridge was up and the guards stood at stiff attention.
"Let's reconnoiter," said Carrick. He was unpleasantly conscious of the fact that every robot they passed-and they bad passed thousands-had turned to look at the signs on their backs.
Yet it was right wasn't it? There was no hope of avoiding observation in any event. The only hope was to fit somehow into the pattern-and spies would certainly be a part of the military pattern.
Wouldn't they?
Garrick turned his back on doubts and led the way around the gingerbread palace.
The only entrance was the drawbridge.
They stopped out of sight of the ramrod-stiff guards. Carrick said: "We'll go in. As soon as we get inside, you put on your costume." He handed her the box. "You know what to do. All you have to do is keep him quiet for a while and let me talk to him."
"Carrick, will this work?"
Garrick exploded: "How the devil do I know? I had Trumie's dossier to work with. I know everything that happened to him when he was a kid-when this trouble started. But to reach him takes a long time, Kathryn. And we don't have a long time. So--"

He took her elbow and marched her toward the guards. "So you know what to do," he said.
"I hope so," breathed Kathryn Pender, looking very small and very young.
They marched down the wide white pavement, past the motionless guards--
Something was coming toward them. Kathryn held back.
"Come on!" Garrick muttered.
"No, look!" she whispered. "Is that-is that Trumie?"
He looked, then stared.
It was Trumie, larger than life. It was Anderson Trumie, the entire human population of the most-congested-island-for-its-population in the world. On one side of him was a tall dark figure, on the other side a squat dark figure, helping him along. His face was horror, drowned in fat. The bloated cheeks shook damply, wet with tears. The eyes squinted out with fright on the world he had made.
Trumie and his bodyguards rolled up to them and past. And then Anderson Trumie stopped.
He turned the blubbery head and read the sign on the back of the girl. I AM A SPY. Panting heavily, clutching the shoulder of the Crockett robot, be gaped wildly at her.
Garrick cleared his throat. This far his plan had gone, and then there was a gap. There had to be a gap. Trumie's history, in the folder that Roosenburg had supplied, had told him what to do with Trumie; and Garrick's own ingenuity had told him how to reach the man. But a link was missing. Here was the subject, and here was the psychist who could cure him, and it was up to Garrick to start the cure.
Trumie cried out in a staccato bleat: "You! What are you? Where do you belong?"
He was talking to the girl. Beside him, the Crockett robot murmured: "Reckon she's a spy, Mistuh Trumie. See thet sign ahangin' on her back?"
"Spy? Spy?" The quivering lips pouted. "Curse you, are you Mata Hari? What are you doing out here? It's changed its face," Trumie complained to the Crockett robot. "It doesn't belong here. It's supposed to be in the harem. Go on, Crockett, get her back!"
"Wait!" said Garrick, but the Crockett robot was ahead of him. It took Kathryn Pender by the arm.
"Come along thar," it said soothingly, and urged her across the drawbridge. She glanced back at Garrick, and for a moment it looked as though she were going to speak. Then she shook her head, as if giving an order.
"Kathryn!" yelled Garrick. "Trumie, wait a minute! That isn't Mata Hari!"
No one was listening. Kathryn Pender disappeared into the Private Place. Trumie, leaning heavily on the hobbling Long John Silver robot, followed.
Garrick, coming back to life, leaped after them.
The scarlet-coated guards jumped before him, their shakos bobbing, their crooked little rifles crossed to bar his way.
He ordered: "One side! Out of my way! I'm a human, don't you understand? You've got to let me pass,"
They didn't even look at him; trying to get by them was like trying to walk through a wall of moving, thrusting steel. He shoved and they pushed him back; he tried to dodge and they were before him. It was hopeless.
And then it was hopeless indeed, because behind them, he saw, the drawbridge had gone up.

Sonny Trumie collapsed into a chair like a mound of blubber falling to the deck of a whaler.
Though he made no signal, the procession of serving robots started at once. In minced the maitre d', bowing and waving its graceful hands. In marched the sommelier, clanking its necklace of keys, hearing its wines in their buckets of ice. In came the lovely waitress robots and the sturdy steward robots, with the platters and tureens, the plates and bowls and cups.
They spread a meal-a dozen meals-before him, and he began to eat.
He ate as a penned pig eats, gobbling until it chokes, forcing the food down because there is nothing to do but eat. He ate, with a sighing accompaniment of moans and gasps, and some of the food was salted with the tears of pain he wept into it, and some of the wine was spilled by his shaking hand. But he ate. Not for the first time that day, and not for the tenth.
Sonny Trumie wept as he ate. He no longer even knew he was weeping. There was the gaping void inside him that he had to fill, had to fill; there was the gaping world about him that he had to people and build and furnish . . . and use.
He moaned to himself. Four hundred pounds of meat and lard, and he had to lug it from end to end of his island, every hour of every day, never resting, never at peace! There should have been a place somewhere, there should have been a time, when he could rest. When he could sleep without dreaming, sleep without waking after a scant few hours with the goading drive to eat and to use, to use and to eat . . .
And it was all so wrong!
The robots didn't understand. They didn't try to understand, they didn't think for themselves. Let him take his eyes from any one of them for a single day and everything went wrong. It was necessary to keep after them, from end to end of the island, checking and overseeing and ordering yes, and destroying to rebuild, over and over!
He moaned again and pushed the plate away.
He rested, with his tallow forehead flat against the table, waiting, while inside him the pain ripped and ripped, and finally became bearable again. And slowly he pushed himself up, and rested for a moment, and pulled a fresh plate toward him, and began again to eat.
After a while, he stopped. Not because he didn't want to go on, but because he absolutely couldn't.
He was bone-tired, but something was bothering him-one more detail to check, one more thing that was wrong. Mata Hari. The houri at the drawbridge. It shouldn't have been out of the Private Place. It should have been in the harem, of course. Not that it mattered, except to Sonny Trumie's never-resting sense of what was right.
Time was when the houris of the harem had their uses, but that time was long and long ago; now they were property, to be fussed over and made to be right to be replaced if they were worn, destroyed if they were wrong. But only property, as all of North Guardian was property-as all of the world would be his property, if only he could manage it.