"Dick, Philip K - Now Wait for Last Year v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

Philip K. Dick
Now Wait for Last Year

Copyright й 1975 Philip K. Dick


Scanned by Jan Klaassen, version 1.0, June 11-12 2001

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To Nancy Hackett

... A way where you might tread the Sun, and be
More bright than he.
Henry Vaughan



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ONE

The apertyx-shaped building, so familiar to him, gave off its usual smoky gray light as Eric Sweetscent collapsed his wheel and managed to park in the tiny stall allocated him. Eight o'clock in the morning, he thought drearily. And already his employer Mr Virgil L. Ackerman had opened TF&D Corporation's offices for business. Imagine a man whose mind is most sharp at eight a.m., Dr Sweetscent mused. It runs against God's clear command. A fine world they're doling out to us; the war excuses any human aberration, even the old man's.


Nonetheless he started toward the in-track Ц only to be halted by the calling of his name. 'Say, Mr Sweetscent! Just a moment, sir!' The twangy Ц and highly repellant Ц voice of a robant; Eric stopped reluctantly, and now the thing coasted up to him, all arms and legs flapping energetically. 'Mr Sweet-scent of Tijuana Fur & Dye Corporation?'


The slight got across to him. 'Dr Sweetscent. Please.'


'I have a bill, doctor.' It whipped a folded white slip from its metal pouch. 'Your wife Mrs Katherine Sweetscent charged this three months ago on her Dreamland Happy Times For All account. Sixty-five dollars plus sixteen per cent charges. And the law, now; you understand. I regret delaying you, but it is, ahem, illegal.' It eyed him alertly as he, with massive reluctance, fished out his checkbook.


'What's the purchase?' he asked gloomily as he wrote the check.


'It was a Lucky Strike package, doctor. With the authentic ancient green. Circa 1940, before World War Two when the package changed. "Lucky Strike green has gone to war," you know.' It giggled.


He couldn't believe it; something was wrong. 'But surely,' he protested, 'that was supposed to be put on the company account.'

'No, doctor,' the robant declared. 'Honest injun. Mrs Sweetscent made it absolutely clear that this purchase was for her private use.' It managed to add, then, an explanation which he knew at once to be spurious. But whether it originated in the robant or with Kathy Ц that he could not tell, at least not immediately. 'Mrs Sweetscent,' the robant stated piously, 'is building a Pitts-39.'


'The hell she is.' He tossed the made-out check at the robant; as it strove to catch the fluttering bit of paper he continued on, toward the in-track.


A Lucky Strike package. Well, he reflected grimly, Kathy is off again. The creative urge, which can only find an outlet in spending. And always above and beyond her own salary Ц which, he had to admit to himself, was a bit greater than his own, alas. But in any case, why hadn't she told him? A major purchase of that sort ...