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

His great-grandniece, Phyllis, said severely, 'Oh Christ, you're too old. Your heart'll give out again right in the middle. And then what'll she Ц whoever she is Ц think? It's undignified to die during you know what.' She eyed Virgil reprovingly.


Virgil screeched, Then the dead man's control in my right fist, carried for such emergencies, would summon Dr Sweet-scent here, and he'd dash in and right there on the spot, without removing me, he'd take out that bad, collapsed old heart and stick in a brand new one, and I'dЧ' He giggled, then patted away the saliva from his lower lip and chin with a folded linen handkerchief from his breast coat pocket, 'I'd continue.' His paper-thin flesh glowed and beneath it his bones, the outline of his skull, fine and clearly distinguishable, quivered with delight and the joy of tantalizing them; they had no entree into this world of his, the private life which he, because of his privileged position, enjoyed even now during the days of privation which the war had brought on.


'"Mille tre,"' Harvey said sourly, quoting Da Ponte's libretto. 'But with you, you old craknit, it's Ц however you say a billion and three in Italian. I hope when I'm your ageЧ'


'You won't ever be my age,' Virgil chortled, his eyes dancing and flaming up with the vitality of enjoyment. 'Forget it, Harv. Forget it and go back to your fiscal records, you walking, droning-on abacus. They won't find you dead in bed with a woman; they'll find you dead with aЧ' Virgil searched his mind. 'With an, ahem, inkwell.'


'Please,' Phyllis said drily, turning to look out at the stars and the black sky of 'tween space.


Eric said to Virgil, 'I'd like to ask you something. About a pack of Lucky Strike green. About three months agoЧ'


'Your wife loves me,' Virgil said. 'Yes, it was for me, doctor; a gift without strings. So ease your feverish mind; Kathy's not interested. Anyhow, it would cause trouble. Women, I can get; artiforg surgeons Ц well.. .' He reflected. 'Yes. When you think about it I can get that, too.'


'Just as I told Eric earlier today,' Jonas said. He winked at Eric, who stoically did not show any response.


'But I like Eric,' Virgil continued. 'He's a calm type. Look at him right now. Sublimely reasonable, always the cerebral type, cool in every crisis; I've watched him work many times, Jonas; I ought to know. And willing to get up at any hour of the night.. . and that sort you don't see much.'


'You pay him,' Phyllis said shortly. She was, as always, taciturn and withdrawn; Virgil's attractive great-grandniece, who sat on the corporation's board of directors, had a piercing, raptorlike quality Ц much like the old man's, but without his sly sense of the peculiar. To Phyllis, everything was business or dross. Eric reflected that had she come onto Himmel there would be no more little carts wheeling about; in Phyllis' world there was no room for the harmless. She reminded him a little of Kathy. And, like Kathy, she was reasonably sexy; she wore her hair in one long braided pigtail dyed a fashionable ultramarine, set off by autonomic rotating earrings and (this he did not especially enjoy) a nose ring, sign of nubility with the higher bourgeois circles.


'What's the purpose of this conference?' Eric asked Virgil Ackerman. 'Can we start discussing it now to save time?' He felt irritable.


'A pleasure trip,' Virgil said. 'Chance to get away from the gloomy biz we're in. We have a guest meeting us at Wash-35; he may already be there... he's got a Blank Check; I've opened my babyland to him, the first time I've let anybody but myself experience it freely.'


'Who?' Harv demanded. 'After all, technically Wash-35 is the property of the corporation, and we're on the board.'


Jonas said acidly, 'Virgil probably lost all his authentic Horrors of War flipcards to this person. So what else could he do but throw open the gates of the place to him?'


'I never flip with my Horrors of War cards or my FBI cards,' Virgil said. 'And by the way I have a duplicate of the Sinking of the Panay. Eton Hambro Ц you know, the fathead who's board chairman of Manfrex Enterprises Ц gave it to me on my birthday. I thought everyone knew I had a complete file but evidently not Hambro. No wonder Freneksy's boys are running his six factories for him these days.'


'Tell us about Shirley Temple in The Littlest Rebel,' Phyllis said in a bored tone, still looking out at the panorama of stars beyond the ship. 'Tell us how sheЧ'


'You've seen that.' Virgil sounded testy.