"Bester, Alfred - Demolished Man, The" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bester Alfred)

"I tell you I don't know who it is." Reich arose abruptly from the couch. "Your
clues don't help. I can't make any identification."
"The Man With No Face does not fill you with fear because he's faceless. You
know who he is. You hate him and fear him, but you know who he is."
"You're the peeper. You tell me. "
"There's a limit to my ability, Mr. Reich. I can read your mind no deeper
without help."
"What do you mean, help? You're the best E.M.D. I could hire. If..."
"You're neither thinking nor meaning that, Mr. Reich. You deliberately hired a
2nd Class Esper in order to protect yourself in such an emergency. Now you're
paying the price of your caution. If you want the screaming to stop, you'll have
to consult one of the 1st Class men... Say, Augustus Tate or Gart or Samuel
@kins..."
"I'll think about it," Reich muttered and turned to go. As he opened the door,
Breen called: "By the way... `We Transport You Into Transports' is the slogan of
the D'Courtney Cartel. How does that tie in with the alteration of `bort' to
`dort'? Think it over."
"The Man With No Face!"
Without staggering, Reich slammed the door across the path from his mind to
Breen and then lurched down the corridor toward his own suite. A wave of savage
hatred burst over him. "He's right. It's D'Courtney who's giving me the screams.
Not because I'm afraid of him. I'm afraid of myself. Known all along. Known it
deep down inside. Known that once I faced it I'd have to kill that D'Courtney
bastard. It's no face because it's the face of murder."
Fully dressed and in his wrong mind, Reich stormed out of his apartment and
descended to the street where a Monarch Jumper picked him up and carried him in
one graceful hop to the giant tower that housed the hundreds of floors and
thousands of employees of Monarch's New York Office. Monarch Tower was the
central nervous system of an incredibly vast corporation, a pyramid of
transportation, communication, heavy industry, manufacture, sales distribution,
research, exploration, importation. Monarch Utilities & Resources, Inc. bought
and sold, traded and gave, made and destroyed. Its pattern of subsidiaries and
holding companies was so complex that it demanded the full-time services of a
2nd Class Esper Accountant to trace the labyrinthine flow of its finances.
Reich entered his office, followed by his chief (Esper 3) secretary and her
staff, bearing the litter of the morning's work.
"Dump it and jet," he growled.
They deposited the papers and recording crystals on his desk and departed
hastily but without rancor. They were accustomed to his rages. Reich seated
himself behind his desk, trembling with a fury that was already goring
D'Courtney. Finally he muttered: "I'll give the bastard one more chance."
He unlocked his desk, opened the drawer-safe and withdrew the Executive's Code
Book, restricted to the executive heads of the firms listed quadruple A-1-* by
Lloyds. He found most of the material he required in the middle pages of the
book:
QQBA ........ PARTNERSHIP
RRCB ........ BOTH OUR
SSDC ........ BOTH YOUR
TTED ........ MERGER
UUFE ........ INTERESTS