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Robert A. Heinlein - The Cat Who Walked Through Walls
Atec Февраль 29 2008 20:18:18
Книга только для ознакомления
. If that nonsense did not make me gag, would the rest
be acceptable? Oh, certainly! Like the gold spectacles of Joseph Smith, like the
tablets handed down to Moses from the Mount, like the red shift to the big bang-
accept the postulate and the rest goes down smoothly.) "Hazel-Gwen, if we assume
a self-aware computer with emotions and free will, I would not boggle at
anything else-from ghosts to little green men. What was it the Red Queen did?
Believe seven impossible things before breakfast."
"The White Queen."
"No, the Red Queen."
"Are you sure, Richard? It was just before-"
"Forget it. Talking chessmen are even harder to swallow than a prankster
computer. Sweetheart, the only evidence you offer is a story told you by your
foster mother in her old age. That's all. Uh, senile, maybe?"
"No, sir. Dying, but not senile. Cancer. From exposure to a solar storm
when she was quite young. So she thought. As may be, it was not senility. She
told me this when she knew she was to die... because she thought the story
should not be lost completely."
"You see the weakness of the story, dear? One death-bed story. No other
data."
"Not quite, Richard."
"Eh?"
"My adoptive father Manuel Davis confirms all of it and then some."
"But- You always spoke of him in the past tense. I think you did. And he
would be... how old? Older than you are
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