"Robert F. Young - Pilgrim's Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

A man under sentence of marriage would be lucky to
have a girl like Julia assigned to him—or would he?

Illustrated by EMSH

ROBERT P. YOUNG works in a machine shop by day, and at night goes home and writes
anti-machine stories! Pilgrim's Project is different: not so much anti-machine per se, it is still a
vigorous argument in favor of the individual human spirit and against standardization. It is also,
of course, a thoroughly exciting story— with one of the most intriguing villains in all sf!

CHAPTER I

"I'D LIKE to apply for a wife," I said.
The Marriage Administration girl inserted an application blank into the talk-typer on her desk. Her
eyes were light blue and her hair was dark brown and she was wearing a Mayflower dress with a
starched white collar.
"Name and number?"
"Roger Bartlett. 14479201B."
"Date of birth?"
"January 17, 2122."
"What is your occupation, Mr. Bartlett?"
"Senior Sentry at the Cadillac Cemetery."
She raised her eyes. Her hair was combed tightly back into a chignon and her face looked round and
full like a little girl's.
"Oh. Have there been any exhumings recently, Mr. Bartlett?"
"Not at Cadillac," I said.
"I'm glad. I think it's a shame the way the ghouls carry on, don't you? Imagine anyone having the
effrontery to rob a sacred car-grave!"
Her voice sounded sincere enough but I got the impression she was ridiculing me—why, I couldn't
imagine. She could not know I was lying.
"Some day they'll rob one grave too many," I said flatly, "and earn the privilege of digging their own."
She lowered her eyes—rather abruptly, I thought. "Last place of employment?"
"Ford Acres."
The longer I looked at her, the more she affected me. The little-girl aspect of her face was
misleading. There was nothing little-girlish about her lithe body, and her stern, high-bosomed dress could
not conceal the burgeoning of full breasts or the breathless sweep of waist and shoulders.
Illogically, she reminded me of a landscape I had seen recently at a clandestine art exhibit. I had
wandered into the dim and dismal place more out of boredom than curiosity, and I had hardly gone two
steps beyond the cellar door when the painting caught my eye. It was called "Twentieth Century
Landscape."
In the foreground, a blue river flowed, and beyond the river a flower-flecked meadow spread out to
a series of small, forested hills. Beyond the hills a great cumulus formation towered into the sky like an
impossibly tall and immaculate mountain. There was only one other object in the scene—the lofty, lonely
speck of a soaring bird.
An impossible landscape by twenty-second century standards; an impossible analogy by any
standards. And yet that's what I thought of, standing there in Marriage Administration Headquarters, the
stone supporting pillars encircling me like the petrified trunks of a decapitated forest and the unwalled
departments buzzing with activity.
 "Can you give us some idea of the kind of wife you want, Mr. Bartlett?"
I wanted to say that I didn't want any kind of a wife, that the only reason I was applying for one was