"Jack Williamson - The Happiest Creature" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

"But it was an excellent replica." The other thing, the one he had thought was
Carmen, gathered itself up from the bottom of the car, speaking gently to him with
what now seemed queerly like the voice of old barrel-belly. "We had taken a great
deal of trouble to make you the happiest one of your breed. " It looked at him sadly
with, Carmen 's limpid dark eyes. "If you had only kept your word. "
"Don't—" He cowered back from it, shivering. "Don't k-k-kill me! "
"We never kill," it murmured. "You need never be afraid of that."
While he sat trembling, it climbed out of the car and picked up the ruined thing
that had looked like Gabe and carried it easily away toward the Oasis garage.
Now he knew that this place was only a copy of Las Verdades, somewhere not on
Earth. When he looked up at the blue crystal sky, he knew that it was only some kind
of screen. He felt the millions of strange eyes beyond it, watching him like some
queer monster in a cage.
He tried to run away.
He gunned the Cadillac back across the acequia bridge and drove wildly back the
way he had come in, on the Alburquerque highway. A dozen miles out, an imitation
construction crewman tried to flag him down, pointing at a sign that said the road
was closed for repairs. He whipped around the barriers and drove the pitching car
on across the imitation desert until he crashed into the bars.