"Robert Sheckley. Pilgrimage to Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора

"No," Simon said. "I thought it was - natural."

Mr. Tate shook his head. "We gave up natural selection centuries ago,
shortly after the Mechanical Revolution. It was too slow, and commercially
unfeasible. Why bother with it, when we can produce any feeling at will by
conditioning and proper stimulation of certain brain centers? The result?
Penny, completely in love with you! Your own bias, which we calculated, in
favor of her particular somatype, made it complete. We always throw in a
the dark sea-beach, the lunatic moon, the pallid dawn - "

"Then she could have been made to love anyone," Simon said slowly.

"Could have been brought to love anyone," Mr. Tate corrected.

"Oh, lord, how did she get into this horrible work?" Simon asked.

"She came in and signed a contract in the usual way," Tate said. "It
pays very well. And at the termination of the lease, we return her original
personality - untouched! But why do you call the work horrible? There's
nothing reprehensible about love."

"It wasn't love!" Simon cried.

"But it was! The genuine article! Unbiased scientific firms have made
qualitative tests of it, in comparison with the natural thing. In every
case, our love tested out to more depth, passion, fervor and scope."

Simon shut his eyes tightly, opened them and said, "Listen to me. I
don't care about your scientific tests. I love her, she loves me, and
that's all that counts. Let me speak to her! I want to marry her!"

Mr. Tate wrinkled his nose in distaste. "Come, come, young man! You
wouldn't want to marry a girl like that! But if it's marriage you're after,
we deal in that, too. I can arrange an idyllic and nearly spontaneous
love-match with a guaranteed, government-inspected virgin - "

"No! I love Penny! At least let me speak to her!"

"That will be quite impossible," Mr. Tate said.

"Why?"

Mr. Tate pushed a button on his desk. "Why do you think? We've wiped
out the previous indoctrination. Penny is now in love with someone else."

And the Simon understood. He had realized that even now Penny was
looking at another man with that passion he had known, feeling for another
man that complete and bottomless love that unbiased scientific firms had
shone to be so much greater than the old-fashioned, commercially unfeasible