"Chalker, Jack L - G.O.D. Inc 2 - The Shadow Dancers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

Iowa. It's on a weak point, but they can't risk usin' it. All they can do there
is send messages back and forth through it.
They don't have but a fraction of the worlds with stations. They only been here
since the early fifties, and not in force till later'n that. I guess it was only
then we came up with somethin' worth stealin'.
The Company and the Mafia and whatever pay real good and more than pay all
expenses, and also cover up whatever it is that faraway home world wants here
that we got and they want to steal. Don't ask me what it is-that's a closely
guarded secret.
Still and all, we came out winners from that one in spite of a bunch of close
scrapes and even more cliffhangers. We also did the company a big favor by
exposing some rotten apples, and unlike the last time we got somethin' out of
it. A fair amount, really, considerin' where we came from. We got a small suite
of offices for the agency in a midtown Philadelphia high rise the company owns
rent-free, our old bills paid off, several thousand bucks in seed money, and we
also got some pretty good payin' clients referred to us by the Company or their
people.
Not that the cases were any different or any more thrillin' than the old ones
were, but there were lots of clients and they all paid and paid real good. At
rates that started at two hundred and fifty bucks a day plus expenses, we did
all right. Got us a fancy two-bedroom apartment in one of the new developments
right in town, too, which is where I was that night, lookin' out the window and
wishin' Sam were around. He wasn't, though; he was in Pittsburgh until the next
afternoon, checking out an accountant livin' way beyond his means.
It was crazy, but right then, with a lot of what I'd always dreamed of all
around, I was thinkin' 'bout quittin' the business. It was really Sam's anyway,
now-I just helped out and gave support and advice now and then. Fact was, I was
what the bankers call more a liability than an asset. We was movin' in higher
circles and higher society with these clients. They was all educated, well off,
rich-and I ain't talkin' 'bout race here, since some of 'em was blacker'n me. I
wasn't the good-lookin', glamorous type, didn't know what fork to use or what
wine went with what-in my old circles, Thunderbird was a step up-and it was like
them and me come from different parallel worlds. You didn't have to walk the
Labyrinth to find that kind of thing. All I had to do was open my mouth and I
was low class, uneducated, ignorant. Most folks thought I was the receptionist
anyway, or maybe the cleaning lady.
Oh, Sam made a big thing about how he needed me, couldn't get along without me,
and all that, and I think maybe he believed it himself, but it wasn't true. Just
goin' in to work was gettin' more and more depressin' every day, even when I had
a lot of work to do. We needed more people, sure, but we needed nice, clean-cut
young folks who were college grads and talked just right and all that. Most of
my friends, the few I had, were from the old neighborhood in Camden or among
some of my cousins all over the place. Now that we had money I was discoverin'
just how many relatives I had, too. I could sure buy company, but none I felt
good with.
In the end, I guess, it was just that I was beginnin' to feel useless and
without much to do. We was just too removed from what I'd been used to and
brought up with. All this new wealth built a wall between me and the kind of
poor folks who were all I knew all my life. I could drop over there, but it was
never the same. I had what they wanted and probably would never have and they