"Mike Resnick - Robots Dont Cry" - читать интересную книгу автора (Resnick Mike)

Robots Don't Cry
Mike Resnick




They call usgraverobbers , but we’re not.



What we do is plunder the past and offer it to the present. We hit old worlds, deserted worlds, worlds
that nobody wants any longer, and we pick up anything we think we can sell to the vast collectibles
market. You want a seven-hundred-year-old timepiece?A thousand-year-old bed?An actual printed
book? Just put in your order, and sooner or later we’ll fill it.



Every now and then we strike it rich. Usually we make a profit. Once in a while we just break even.
There’s only been one world where we actually lost money; I still remember it–Greenwillow. Except that
it wasn’t green, and there wasn’t a willow on the whole damned planet.



There was a robot, though. We found him, me and theBaroni , in a barn, half-hidden under a pile of
ancient computer parts and self-feeders for mutated cattle.



We were picking through the stuff, wondering if there was any market for it, tossing most of it aside,
when the sun peeked in through the doorway and glinted off a prismatic eye.



"Hey, take a look at what we’ve got here," I said. "Give me a hand digging it out."



The junk had been stored a few feet above where he’d been standing and the rack broke, practically
burying him. One of his legs was bent at an impossible angle, and his expressionless face was covered
with cobwebs. TheBaroni lumbered over–when you’ve got three legs you don’t glide gracefully–and
studied the robot.
 "Interesting," he said. He never used whole sentences when he could annoy me with a single word that
could mean almost anything.



"He should pay our expenses, once we fix him up and get him running," I said.