"Williamson, Jack - 01 - The Humanoids 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

"He found me a homeless child, wandering in a land that war had ruined. He rescued me from starvation and fear, and brought me up to join his crusade. I was with him for a good many years, while he was trying one weapon and another, but he always failed to stop the humanoids."
A sad sternness hardened White's bearded face.
"Growing old, defeated, Mansfield tried to make a physical scientist out of me, to carry on after him. He failed again. I had learned to hate the humanoids enough, but I lacked his scientific gift. He had been a physicist. I grew into something else.
"Living like a wild animal in the rubble of ruined cities, hunting and hunted while I was still a child, I had learned powers of the human mind that Mansfield could never recognize. Our philosophies came to differ. He had put his faith in machines - and made the humanoids. When he came to see his blunder, he tried to destroy them with, more machines. He was bound to fail - because those mechanicals are as nearly perfect as any machine will ever be.
"I shared his hatred, but I saw the need of some better weapon than any machine. I put my trust in men - in the native human powers I had begun to learn. If men were to save themselves, I saw they must discover and use their own inborn capacities, rusty as they are from long neglect.
"So at last we separated. I'm sorry that our parting words were too bitter - I called Mansfield a machine-minded fool, and he said that my science of the mind would only end with another regimentation of mankind, worse than the rule of the humanoids. He went on to try his last weapon - he was attempting to ignite a chain reaction in the oceans and the rocks of Wing IV, with some kind of rhodomagnetic beam. I never saw him again, but I know he didn't succeed. Because the humanoids are still running."
"I'm still fighting them, and these are my soldiers." The huge man nodded indignantly at his ragged followers squatting by the fire. "Look at them - the most talented citizens of this planet. I found them in the gutter, the jail, the madhouse. But they are the last hope of man."
Flinching from the angry boom of his voice, Forester whispered uneasily, "I don't quite see - what are these weapons of the mind?"
"One of the simplest is atomic probability."
"Eh?"
"Take an atom of Potassium-40." White's great voice turned softly patient again. "A physicist yourself, you can easily picture such an unstable atom as a sort of natural wheel of chance, set to pay off only once during several billion years of spinning."
Forester nodded skeptically, thinking that nothing could be deadlier than the missiles of his own project.
"Like any machine of chance," White went on, "an unstable atom can be manipulated. Just as easily as a pair of dice - it seems that size and distance aren't important factors, in telekinesis."
Forester blinked unbelievingly at the withered little gambler crouching by the fire, who had just rolled a five and a two. "How do you manipulate an atom?"
"I don't quite know." Trouble darkened White's burning eyes. "Although Jane does it easily, and the rest of us have made a few successful efforts at it - children learn the mental arts more readily, I think, perhaps because they don't have to unlearn the false truths and break the bad habits of mechanistic science. And Jane is unusual."
His brooding face warmed for a moment, as he glanced at the little girl, who was eagerly watching old Graystone dip out her bowl of stew.
"But I don't know," he muttered wearily. "The facts I have discovered are often apparently contradictory, and always incomplete. Perhaps the uncertainty principle involved in atomic stability doesn't apply to psychophysical phenomena. Perhaps it is merely an illusion, born of the fact that our physical senses are too coarse to look into atoms. I have suspected that physical time and space are similar illusions - I don't know. But I do know that Jane Carter can detonate K-40 atoms."
White shrugged heavily, in the silver cloak.
"I've had dreams, Forester." His voice turned wistfully sad. "Magnificent dreams, of a coming time when my new science might free every man from the old, cruel shackles of the brute and the machine. I used to believe that the human mind could conquer matter, master space, and govern time.
"But the most of my efforts have failed - I don't know why." He shook his fiery, shaggy head. "I run into blind alleys. I stumble over obstacles that I can never really identify. Perhaps there's some barrier I fail to see, some limiting natural law that I've never grasped."
He moved restlessly, towering over Forester.
"I don't know," he repeated bitterly. "And there's no time left for trial and error now, because those machines have taken most of the human universe. This is one of the last planets left - and I don't think you know that their first scouts are already here!"
Forester stared up in slack-jawed unbelief.
"Yes, old Mansfield's humanoids are already infiltrating your defenses." White's voice turned wearily grim. "They make efficient spies, you see. More clever than the human agents employed against you by the Triplanet Powers. They don't sleep, and they don't blunder."
"Huh!" Forester gulped, astonished. "You don't mean - spying machines?"
"You've met them," White said. "You would find it impossible to tell them from men - they are cunning enough to avoid being X-rayed or mangled in accidents. But I know them. That's one thing I've learned, for all my failures. I've trained myself to sense the rhodomagnetic energy that operates them."
Forester shook his head, incredulous and yet appalled.
"They're already here," the big man insisted. "And Ash Overstreet says Mason Horn's report is going to be the signal for them to strike. That leaves us no more time for bungling. To stop them at all, we must grasp every device we can. That's why we need rhodomagnetic engineers."
Forester stood up uncertainly. "I don't quite see-"
"Those machines are rhodomagnetic," White's great voice broke in. "They are all operated by remote control, on beamed rhodomagnetic power, from a central relay grid on Wing IV. They must be attacked, somehow, through that grid - because they can replace one lost unit, or a billion of them, without feeling any harm. Now, unfortunately I've no head for higher math, and old Mansfield failed to teach me more than the rudiments of rhodomagnetics. So that's where you come in." The deep voice tightened. "Will you join us?"
Kicking uncomfortably at the timber where he had sat, Forester hesitated for half a second. He was fascinated against his will by the possibility that White and his dubious disciples had stumbled into a new field of science, but he shook his head uneasily. If all this were true - if Mason Horn were really coming back to report that Triplanet scientists had perfected mass- conversion weapons - then he should be back at his own project, standing by for a Red Alert.
"Sorry," he said stiffly. "Can't do it."
White didn't argue. Oddly, instead, as if he had expected the refusal, he turned immediately to Ironsmith, who still sat beside Jane Carter at the fire, listening with a calm attention.
"Ironsmith, will you stay with us?"
Forester caught his breath, watching narrowly. If the clerk chose to stay, that might mean that he was already an accomplice of White's. It might even mean that he had helped old Graystone the Great stage the expert illusion of the little girl's visit to the project - if that could have been any sort of trick. But Ironsmith shook his sandy head.
"I can't see what's so bad about those mechanicals," he protested mildly. "Not from anything I heard you say. After all, they're nothing but machines, doing what they were designed for. If they can actually abolish war, I'd be glad to see them come."
"They're already here!" Savagely harsh, White's voice forgot to drawl. "Overstreet told me you wouldn't help us now, but at least you are warned. I think you'll change your mind when you meet the humanoids."
"Might be." Ironsmith met his ruthless glare with a pink and affable grin. "But I don't think so."
"Anyhow, there's something you can do." White swung impatiently back to Forester, as if stung by Ironsmith's calm. "You can warn the nation of those humanoid spies infiltrating your defenses, and those invincible ships already on their way from Wing IV with mechanicals enough to take over the planet. As scientific adviser to the Defense Authority, perhaps you can delay the invasion long enough-"
White broke off suddenly, with an inquiring glance at Ash Overstreet. The short man had stirred on the rock where he sat. His dim eyes stared vacantly at the dark stone walls, but the tilt of his head had a curious new alertness.
"It's time for him to go." The clairvoyant nodded heavily at Forester. "Because his men are getting nervous, out there with their rocket gun. They imagine we're Triplanet agents, and they're about ready to blow us up."



Chapter EIGHT

FORESTER PEERED at his watch and darted out of that dark room without ceremony. Outside the tower, he began frantically waving his hat, hoping that Armstrong and Dodge could see him through the drifting fog. Behind him, he heard Ironsmith taking a more deliberate leave. Little Jane Carter laughed with pleasure, and then he heard her voice:
"Thank you, Mr. Ironsmith!"
"Come along!" Forester shouted hoarsely. "Before they shoot!"
But the smiling mathematician lingered maddeningly, to shake the trembling hand of the old magician and murmur some farewell to White. He had turned out the pockets of his baggy slacks, to give Jane Carter a few coins and all his stock of chewing gum, and she followed him outside, when at last he came, waving a grave farewell.