"Jack L Chalker - - G.o.d. Inc 1 - Labyrinth Of Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

THE LABYRINTH OF DREAMSTHE LABYRINTH OF DREAMS
Copyright й 1987 by Jack L. Chalker
ebook ver. 1.0

For Jack Williamson,
who seems to have come up with the idea first
back in the dark ages of SF,
with love and respect.

1.
Spade & Marlowe, P.I.'s


It ain't often when a big case just up and walks into your office on a bright
spring day, but being a private dick is all danger and adventure and you never
can take anything for sure.
The dame looked exotic, like she was just off the boat, but her movements and
particularly her eyes said she was here with a definite purpose in mind, one I
might not like. She was covering a lot up, that was for sure. Her hair had more
black dye than a licorice factory and she reeked of cheap perfume like a whore
out for her first trick, but I knew right away that she wasn't no woman of the
evening. Her big brown eyes met mine and her mouth turned up in a nasty curl, as
if she wasn't real pleased with what she was seeing. This was a dame with a will
of her own, one that wouldn't be easily turned from anything she had in mind to
do.
I felt like a kitten caught raiding the garbage pail; she had that effect on you
even before she said anything at all. Somewhere in the back of my mind I had the
feeling we'd met before, like when you remember dreaming the winning horse in
the fifth but only after the race was run and you bet on the nag that was still
trying to find the track. And now she spoke, the words in accented English
striking my heart like machine gun bullets at the Jersey marshes.
"Hey! Horowitz! You want I should clean this pigsty, and maybe the pig with it?"
I sighed, my lovely fantasy shattered. "Mrs. Kybanski, have you ever heard that
a little politeness will get you a long way?"
"No. Sing a few lines. Besides, if I wanted to work with people, I would've
taken the waitress job at Denny's. You're the only one left in this dump, and
since it ain't been condemned as a public danger yet, I got to clean it. Bad
enough I got to walk these streets after dark. I don't have to do it so late
except for you. Why don't you go home? You ain't gonna miss no clients. They
don't even come here in the daytime!"
Unfortunately, that was close to the truth, but her stock appeal for pity had a
flaw in it. "Mrs. KybanskiЧthere are twelve offices in this rundown excuse for
an office building, and eleven of them are empty. You just came in five minutes
ago. Clean them first. I'll probably be long gone by then."
"Yeah, sure. Use your routine, your schedule, your convenience. Why not just go
home to your shikse and get a good meal for a change? Not that you don't look
like you been getting a good meal once too much."
That was why I tolerated, even liked, Mrs. Kybanski in spite of her wonderful
manners and disposition. No matter what her other flaws, she was the only one
I'd met in the seven years I've been married who thought of Brandy as a shikse