"A Maze Of Death v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"I'll get you," she gasped, "because I want you." I need to have you, she said to herself. Covering me like a heavy shade, a protection from the sun and from seeing. I don't want to look any more, she said to herself. Weigh me down, she thought. Show me what there is of you; show me your real being, without benefit of clothes. Fumbling behind her she unsnapped her peek-n-squeeze bra. Deftly she tugged it out from its place within her sweater; she pulled, strained, managed to drop it onto a chair. At that the man laughed. "Why are you laughing?" she demanded.
"Your neatness," he said. "Getting it onto a chair instead of dropping it onto the floor."
"Damn you," she said, knowing that he, like everyone else, was laughing at her. "I'll get you," she snarled, and pulled him with all her strength; this time she managed to move him a few tottering steps in the direction of the bed.
"Hey, goddam it," he protested. But again she managed to move him several steps. "Stop!" he said. And then she had tumbled him onto the bed. She held him down with one knee and rapidly, with great expertise, unsnapped her skirt and pushed it from the bed, onto the floor.
"See?" she said. "I don't have to be neat." She dove for him then; she pinned him down with her knees. "I'm not obsessive," she said, as she removed the last of her clothing. Now she tore at the buttons of his shirt. A button, ripped loose, rolled like a little wheel from the bed and onto the floor. At that she laughed. She felt very good. This part always excited her--it was like the final stage of a hunt, in this case a hunt for a big animal which smelled of sweat and of cigarette smoke and of agitated fear. How can he be afraid of me? she asked herself, but it was always this way--she had come to accept it. In fact she had come to like it.
"Let--me--go," he gasped, pushing upward against her weight. "You're so darn--slippery," he managed to say as she gripped his head with her knees.
"I can make you so happy, sexually," she told him; she always said this, and sometimes it worked; sometimes the man gave in at the prospect which she held open to him. "Come on," she said, in rapid, imploring grunts.
The door of the room banged open. Immediately, instinctively, she sprang from the man, from the bed, stood upright, breathing noisily, peering at the figure in the doorway. His wife. Mary Morley. Susie at once snatched up her clothes; this was one part which she did not enjoy, and she felt overwhelming hatred toward Mary Morley. "Get out of here," Susie panted. "This is my room."
"Seth!" Mary Morley said in a shrill voice. "What in the name of God is the matter with you? _How could you do this?_" She moved stiffly toward the bed, her face pale.
"God," Morley said, sitting up and smoothing his hair into place. "This girl is nuts," he said to his wife in a plaintive, whining tone. "I had nothing to do with it; I was trying to get away. You saw that, didn't you? Couldn't you tell I was trying to get away? Didn't you see that?"
Mary Morley said in her shrill, speeded-up voice, "If you had wanted to get away you could have."
"No," he said imploringly. "Really, so help me God. She had me pinned down. I was getting loose, though. If you hadn't come in I would have gotten away by myself."
"I'll kill you," Mary Morley said; she spun, paced about in a great circle which swept out most of the room. Looking for something to pick up and hit with; Susie knew the motion, the searching, the glazed, ferocious, incredulous expression on her face. Mary Morley found a vase, snatched it up, stood by the dresser, her chest heaving as she confronted Seth Morley. She raised the vase in a spasmodic, abrupt, backward swing of her right arm .
On the dresser the miniaturized building slid a minute panel aside. A tiny cannon projected. Mary did not see it, but Susie and Seth Morley did.
"Look out!" Seth gasped, groping at his wife to get hold of her hand. He yanked her toward him. The vase crashed to the floor. The barrel of the cannon rotated, taking new aim. All at once a beam projected from it, in Mary Morley's direction. Susie, laughing, backed away, putting distance between herself and the beam.
The beam missed Mary Morley. On the far wall of the room a hole appeared and through it black night air billowed, cold and harsh, entering the room. Mary wobbled, retreated a step.
Rushing into the bathroom, Seth Morley disappeared, then came dashing out again, the waterglass in his hand. He sprinted to the dresser, poured water onto the building replica. The snout of the cannon ceased to rotate.
"I think I got it," Seth Morley said, wheezing asthmatically.
From the diminutive structure a curl of gray smoke drifted up. The structure hummed briefly and then a pool of sticky, grease-like stain dribbled out from it, mixing with the pool of water which had now formed around it. The structure bucked, spun, and then all at once decayed into inanimation. He was right; it was dead.
"You killed it," Susie said, accusingly.
Seth Morley said, "That's what killed Tallchief."
"Did it try to kill me?" Mary Morley asked faintly. She looked about unsteadily, the fanaticism of fury gone from her face now. Cautiously, she seated herself and stared at the structure, blank and pale, then said to her husband, "Let's get out of here."
To Susie, Seth Morley said, "I'm going to have to tell Glen Belsnor." He gingerly, and with great caution, picked up the dead little block; holding it in the palm of his hand he stared at it a long, long time.
"It took me three weeks to tame that one," Susie said. "Now I have to find another, and bring it back here without getting killed, and tame it like I did this one." She felt massive waves of accusation slapping higher and higher within her. "Look what you did," she said, and went swiftly to gather up her clothing.
Seth and Mary Morley started toward the door, Seth's hand on his wife's back. Guiding her out.
"Goddam you both!" she shouted in accusation. Halfdressed, she followed after them. "What about tomorrow?" she said to Seth. "Are we still going on a walk? I want to show you some of the--"
"No," he said harshly, and then he turned to gaze at her long and somberly. "You really don't understand what happened," he said.
Susie said, "I know what _almost_ happened."
"Does someone have to die before you can wake up?" he said.
"No," she said, feeling uneasy; she did not like the expression in his hard, boring eyes. "All right," she said, "if it's so important to you, that little toy--"
"'Toy,' "he said mockingly.
"Toy," she repeated. "Then you ought to be really interested in what's out there. Don't you understand? This is just a model of the real Building. Don't you want to see it? I've seen it very closely. I even know what the sign reads over the main entrance. Not the entrance where the trucks come and go but the entrance--"
"What does it say?" he said.
Susie said, "Will you go with me?" To Mary Morley she said, with all the graciousness she could command, "You, too. Both of you ought to come."
"I'll come alone," Seth said. To his wife he said, "It's too dangerous; I don't want you along."
"You don't want me along," Mary said, "for obvious other reasons." But she sounded dim and scared, as if the close call with the structure's energy beam had banished every emotion in her except raw, clinging fear.
Seth Morley said, "What does it say over the entrance?"
After a pause Susie said, "It says 'Whippery.'
"What does that mean?" he said.
"I'm not positive. But it sounds fascinating. Maybe we can somehow get inside, this time. I've gone real close, almost up to the wall. But I couldn't find a side door, and I was afraid--I don't know why--to go in the main entrance."
Wordlessly, Seth Morley, steering his dazed wife, strode out into the night. She found herself standing there in the middle of her room, alone and only half-dressed.
"Bitch!" she called loudly after them. Meaning Mary.
They continued on. And were gone from sight.


7

"Don't kid yourself," Glen Belsnor said. "If it shot at your wife it's because that loopy dame, that Susie Dumb or Smart, whichever it is, wanted it to. She taught it. They can be trained, you see." He sat holding the tiny structure, staring down at it, a brooding expression settling by degrees into his long, lean face.
"If I hadn't grabbed her," Seth said, "we would have had a second death tonight."
"Maybe yes, maybe no. Considering the meager output of these things it probably would only have knocked her out."