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

But property shouldn't be wrong.
He signaled to the Crockett robot and, leaning on it, walked down the long terrazzo hall toward the harem. He tried to remember what the houri had looked like. The face didn't matter; he was nearly sure it had changed it. It had worn a sheer red blouse and a brief fed skirt, he was almost certain, but the face--

It had had a face, of course. But Sonny had lost the habit of faces. This one had been somehow different but he couldn't remember just why. Still-the blouse and skirt were red, he was nearly sure. And it had been carrying something in a box. And that was odd, too.
He waddled a little faster, for now he was positive it was wrong.
"Thar's the harem, Mistuh Trumic," said the robot at his side. It disengaged itself gently, leaped forward and held the door to the harem for him.
"Wait for me," Sonny commanded, and waddled forward into the harem halls.
Once he had so arranged the harem that he needed no help inside it; the halls were railed, at a height where it was easy for a pudgy hand to grasp the rail; the distances were short the rooms close together.
He paused and called over his shoulder: "Stay where you can hear me." It had occurred to him that if the houri robot was wrong, he would need Crockett's guns to make it right.
A chorus of female voices sprang into song as he entered the main patio. They were a bevy of beauties, clustered around a fountain, diaphanously dressed, languorously glancing at Sonny Trumie as he waddled inside.
"Shut up!" he shrieked. "Go back to your rooms!"
They bowed their heads and, one by one, slipped into the cubicles.
No sign of the red blouse and the red skirt. He began the rounds of the cubicles, panting, peering into them.
"Hello, Sonny," whispered Theda Bara, lithe on a leopard rug, and he passed on. "I love you!" cried Nell Gwynn, and, "Come to me!" commanded Cleopatra, but he passed them by. He passed Dubarry and Marilyn Monroe, he passed Moll

Flanders and he passed Troy's Helen. No sign of the houri in red--
Yes, there was. He didn't see the houri, but he saw the signs of the houri's presence: the red blouse and the red skirt, lying limp and empty on the floor.
Sonny gasped: "Where are you? Come out here where I can see you!"
Nobody answered Sonny.
"Come out!" he bawled.
And then he stopped. A door opened and someone came out; not an houri, not female; a figure without sex but loaded with love, a teddy-bear figure, as tall as pudgy Sonny Trumie himself, waddling as he waddled, its stubby welcoming arms stretched out to him.
He could hardly believe his eyes. Its color was a little darker than Teddy. It was a good deal taller than Teddy. But unquestionably, undoubtedly, in everything that mattered, it was--
"Teddy," whispered Sonny Trumie, and let the furry arms go around his four hundred pounds.
Twenty years disappeared. "They wouldn't let me have you," Sonny told the teddy-bear.
It said, in a voice musical and warm: "It's all right Sonny. You can have me now, Sonny. You can have everything, Sonny."
"They took you away," he whispered, remembering.
They took the teddy-bear away; he had never forgotten. They took it away and Mother was wild and Father was furious. They raged at the little boy and scolded him and threatened him. Didn't he know they were poor, and Did he want to ruin them all, and What was wrong with him, anyway, that he wanted his little sister's silly stuffed robots when he was big enough to use nearly grown-up goods?

The night bad been a terror, with the frowning, sad robots ringed around and the little girl crying; and what had made it terror was not the scolding-he'd had scoldings-but the worry, the fear and almost the panic in his parents' voices. For what he did, he came to understand, was no longer a childish sin. It was a big sin, a failure to consume his quota--
And it had to be punished.
The first punishment was the extra birthday party.
The second was-shame.
Sonny Trumie, not quite twelve, was made to feel shame and humiliation. Shame is only a little thing, but it makes the victim of it little, too.
Shame.
The robots were reset to scorn him. He woke to mockery and went to bed with contempt. Even his little sister lisped the catalogue of his failures.
You aren't trying, Sonny, and You don't care, Sonny, and You're a terrible disappointment to us, Sonny.
And finally all the things were true, because Sonny at twelve was what his elders made him.
And they made him . . . "neurotic" is the term; a pretty sounding word that means ugly things like fear and worry and endless self-reproach . . .
"Don't worry," whispered the Teddy. "Don't worry, Sonny. You can have me. You can have what you want. You don't have to have anything else."

Garrick raged through the halls of the Private Place like a tiger. "Kathryn!" he shouted. "Kathryn Pender!"
The robots peeped out at him worriedly and sometimes they got in his way and he bowled them aside. They didn't fight back, naturally-what robot would hurt a human? But sometimes they spoke to him, pleading, for it was not according to the wishes of Mr. Trumie that anyone but him rage destroying through North Guardian Island. Garrick passed them by.
"Kathryn!" he called. "Kathryn!"
He told himself fiercely: Trumie was not dangerous. Trumie was laid bare in his folder, the one that Roosenburg bad supplied, and he couldn't be blamed; he meant no harm. He was once a little boy who was trying to be good by consuming, consuming, and he wore himself into neurosis doing it; and then they changed the rules on him. End of the ration, end of forced consumption, as the robots took over for mankind at the other end of the farm-and-factory cornucopia. It wasn't necessary to struggle to consume, so the rules were changed.
And maybe Trumie knew that the rules had been changed, but Sonny didn't. It was Sonny, the little boy trying to be good, who had made North Guardian Island.
And it was Sonny who owned the Private Place and all it held-including Kathryn Pender.
Garrick called hoarsely: "Kathryn! If you hear me, answer me!"-
It had seemed so simple. The fulcrum on which the weight of Trumie's neurosis might move was a teddy-bear. Give him a teddy-bear-or, perhaps, a teddy-bear suit, made by night in the factories of Fisherman's Island, with a girl named Kathryn Pender inside-and let him bear, from a source he could trust, the welcome news that it was no longer necessary to struggle, that compulsive consumption could have an end. Then Garrick or any other psychist would clear it all up, but only if Trumie would listen.
"Kathryn!" roared Roger Garrick, racing through a room of mirrors and carved statues. Because, just in case Trumie didn't listen, just in case the folder was wrong and Teddy wasn't the key-
Why, then, Teddy to Trumie would be only a robot. And Trumie destroyed them by the score.