"Blish, James - Beep" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

upon any scale that I may choose; and that I have the right
to keep my methods secret, as the so-called 'intellectual
assets' of my firm. If you wish to use our services, well
and good. We will provide them, with absolute guarantees
on all information we furnish you, for an appropriate fee.
But our methods are our own property."
Robin Weinbaum smiled twistedly. "I'm not a naive man,
Mr. Stevens," he said. "My service is hard on naivete. You
know as well as I do that the government can't allow you
to operate on a free-lance basis, supplying top-secret informa-
tion to anyone who can pay the price, or even free of charge
to video columnists on a 'test' basis, even though you arrive
at every jot of that information independently of espionage
which I still haven't entirely ruled out, by the way. If you
can duplicate this Brindisi performance at will, we will have
to have your services exclusively. In short, you become a
hired civilian arm of my own bureau."
"Quite," Stevens said, returning the smile in a fatherly
way. "We anticipated that, of course. However, we have
contracts with other governments to consider; Erskine, in
particular. If we are to work exclusively for Earth, neces-
sarily our price will include compensation for renouncing our
other accounts."
"Why should it? Patriotic public servants work for their
government at a loss, if they can't work for it any other way."
"I am quite aware of that. I am quite prepared to renounce
my other interests. But I do require to be paid."
"How much?" Weinbaum said, suddenly aware that his
fists were clenched so tightly that they hurt.
Stevens appeared to consider, nodding his flowery white
poll in senile deliberation. "My associates would have to be
consulted. Tentatively, however, a sum equal to the present
appropriation of your bureau would do, pending further
negotiations."
Weinbaum shot to his feet, eyes wide. "You old buc-
caneer! You know damned well that I can't spend my entire
appropriation on a single civilian service! Did it ever occur
to you that most of the civilian outfits working for us are
on cost-plus contracts, and that our civilian executives are
being paid just a credit a year, by their own choice? You're
demanding nearly two thousand credits an hour from your
own government, and claiming the legal protection that the
government affords you at the same time, in order to let
those fanatics on Erskine run up a higher bid!"
"The price is not unreasonable," Stevens said. "The service
is worth the price."
"That's where you're wrong! We have the discoverer of
the machine working for us. For less than half the sum
you're asking, we can find the application of the device that
you're trading onof that you can be damned sure."