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

Against that backdrop Himmel did not look so ludicrous. It was the times. Madness haunted the atmosphere itself, from the Mole on down to this quality-control functionary who was clearly disturbed in the clinical, psychiatric sense.


Walking off down the hall with Jonas Ackerman, Eric said, 'He's a pook.' That was the most powerful term for aberrance in currency.


'Obviously,' Jonas said, with a gesture of dismissal. 'But this gives me a new insight into old Virgil, the fact that he'd tolerate this and certainly not because it gives him a profit Ц that's not it. Frankly I'm glad. I thought Virgil was more hard-boiled; I'd have expected him to bounce this poor nurt right out of here, into a slave-labor gang on its way to Lilistar. God, what a fate that would be. Himmel is lucky.'


'How do you think it'll end?' Eric asked. 'You think the Mole will sign a separate treaty with the reegs and bail us out of this and leave the 'Starmen to fight it alone Ц which is what they deserve?'


'He can't,' Jonas said flatly. 'Freneksy's secret police would swoop down on us here on Terra and make mincemeat out of him. Kick him out of office and replace him overnight with someone more militant. Someone who likes the job of prosecuting the war.'


'But they can't do that,' Eric said. 'He's our elected leader, not theirs.' He knew, however, that despite these legal considerations Jonas was right. Jonas was merely appraising their ally realistically, facing the facts.


'Our best bet,' Jonas said, 'is simply to lose. Slowly, inevitably, as we're doing.' He lowered his voice to a rasping whisper. 'I hate to talk defeatist talkЧ'


'Feel free.'


Jonas said, 'Eric, it's the only way out, even if we have to look forward to a century of occupation by the reegs as our punishment for picking the wrong ally in the wrong war at the wrong time. Our very virtuous first venture into interplanetary militarism, and how we picked it Ц how the Mole picked it.' He grimaced.


'And we picked the Mole,' Eric reminded him. So the responsibility, ultimately, came back to them.


Ahead, a slight, leaflike figure, dry and weightless, drifted all at once toward them, calling in a thin, shrill voice, 'Jonas! And you, too, Sweetscent Ц time to get started for the trip to Wash-35.' Virgil Ackerman's tone was faintly peevish, that of a mother bird at her task; in his advanced age Virgil had become almost hermaphroditic, a blend of man and woman into one sexless, juiceless, and yet vital entity.


TWO
Opening the ancient, empty Camel cigarettes package, Virgil Ackerman said as he flattened its surfaces, 'Hits, cracks, taps, or pops. Which do you take, Sweetscent?'


Taps,' Eric said.


The old man peered at the marking stamped on the inside glued bottom fold of the now two-dimensional package. 'It's cracks. I get to cork you on the arm Ц thirty-two times.' He ritualistically tapped Eric on the shoulder, smiling gleefully, his natural-style ivory teeth pale and full of animated luster. 'Far be it from me to injure you, doctor; after all, I might need a new liver any moment now... I had a bad few hours last night after I went to bed and I think Ц but check me on this Ц it was due to toxemia once again. I felt loggy.'


In the seat beside Virgil Ackerman, Dr Eric Sweetscent said, 'How late were you up and what did you do?'


'Well, doctor, there was this girl.' Virgil grinned mischievously at Harvey, Jonas, Ralf and Phyllis Ackerman, those members of the family who sat around him in his thin, tapered interplan ship as it sped from Terra toward Wash-35 on Mars. 'Need I say more?'