"Dick, Philip K - The Unteleported Man (uncut)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

After a tormented pause he said, "WeЧnever even tried. Years. Even at hyper-see." The girl, across from him, still waited, wanted to hear him say it. "With our flagship transport," he said, "eighteen years."
"And with Dr. von Einem's teleportation instrumentЧ"
"Fifteen minutes," he said harshly. And Whale's Mouth, the number IX planet of the Fomalhaut system, was to date the sole planet discovered either by manned or unmanned observers which was truly habitableЧtruly a second Terra. Eighteen years . . . and even deep-sleep would not help, for such a prolonged period; aging, although slowed down, although consciousness was dimmed, still occurred. Alpha and Prox; that had been all right; that had been short enough. But Fomalhaut, at twenty-four light-yearsЧ
"We just couldn't compete," he said. "We simply could not carry colonists that far."
"Would you have tried, without von Einem's Telpor breakthrough?"
Rachmael said, "My fatherЧ"
"Was thinking about it." She nodded. "But then he died and it was too late and now you've had to sell virtually all your ships to meet note-payment due-dates. Now, from us, Rachmael. You wanted . . . ?"
"I still own," he said, "our fastest, newest, biggest ship, the Omphalos; she's never been sold, no matter how great the pressure THL has put on me, within and outside the UN courts." He hesitated, then said it. "I want to go to Whale's Mouth. By ship. Not by Dr. von Einem's Telpor. And by my own ship, by what we meant to be ourЧ" He broke off. "I want to take her all the way to Fomalhaut, on an eighteen-year voyageЧalone. And when I arrive at Whale's Mouth I'll proveЧ"
"Yes?" Freya said. "Prove what, Rachmael?"
"That we could have done it. Had von Einem not come along with that thing, thatЧ" He gestured, with impotent fury.
Freya said, "Telpor is one of the most vital discoveries in human history, Rachmael. Teleportation, from one star system to another, twenty-four light-years in fifteen minutes. When you reach Whale's Mouth by the Omphalos, I for instance will beЧ" She calculated. "Forty-three years old."
He was silent.
"What," Freya asked in a soft voice, "would you accomplish by your trip?"
He said, honestly, "IЧdon't know."
Presently Freya said, reading from her folio, "You have, for six months now, been thoroughly checking out the Omphalos at a concealedЧeven from usЧlaunch field and maintenance dock on Luna. She is now considered ready for the inter-system flight. Trails of Hoffman has tried, through the courts, to attach her to claim her as their legal property; this you have managed to fight. So far. But nowЧ"
"My lawyers tell me," Rachmael said, "that three days stand between me and THL seizing the Omphalos."
"You can't blast off within three days?"
"The deep-sleep equipment. It's a week from being readied." He let out his breath raggedly. "A subsidiary of THL manufactures vital components. They've beenЧheld up."
Freya nodded. "And your coming here is to request us," she said, "to pick up the Omphalos, with one of our veteran pilots, disappear with her for a week, until she's ready for the flight to Fomalhaut. Correct?"
"That's it," he said, and sat waiting. "I'm not good enough to lose her. They'd find me. But yoursЧone of your best." He did not look directly at her; it meant too much.
"You can pay our fee ofЧ"
"Nothing. I have absolutely no funds. Later, as I continue to liquidate the assets of the corporation, possibly IЧ"
Freya said, "There's a note here, Xeroxed, from my employer, Mr. Glazer-Holliday. He observes that you're poscredless. His instructions to usЧ" She read the note, silently. "However, we're to cooperate with you, despite your financial helplessness." Glancing up at him she said, "We'll dispatch an experienced pilot who will take the Omphalos off where THL, where even the UN agents acting for the Secretary General, Herr Horst Bert old, won't find her. This our man can doЧwhile you manage, if you can, to obtain the final components of the deep-sleep equipment." She smiled slightly. "But I doubt if you'll obtain those components, Rachmael; there's an additional memo here to that effect, too. You're right: Theodoric Ferry sits on its board of directors, too, and this is all legal, this monopoly which the firm possesses." Her smile was bitter. "UN sanctioned."
He was silent. Obviously it was hopeless; no matter how long the Lies Incorporated professional and ultra-veteran space-pilot kept the huge liner the Omphalos lost between planets, the components would be "held up unavoidably," as the invoices, marked back-order, would read.
"I think," Freya said presently, "that your problem is not the mere obtaining of deep-sleep components. That can be handled; there are ways . . . we, for instance, canЧalthough this will cost you a good deal of money eventuallyЧpick them up on the blackmarket. Your problem, RachmaelЧ"
"I know," he said. His problem was not how to get to the Fomalhaut system, to its ninth planet, Whale's Mouth, which was Terra's sole thriving colony-world. In fact his problem was not the eighteen-year voyage at all.
His problem wasЧ
Why go at all, when Dr. von Einem's Telpor construct, available at a nominal cost at any of Trails of Hoffman's many retail outlets on Terra, made the trip a mere fifteen-minute minor journey, and within financial reach of even the most modest, income-wise speaking, Terran family?
Aloud he said, "Freya, the trip by Telpor to Whale's MouthЧit sounds fine." And forty million Terran citizens had taken advantage of it. And the aud and vid reports returningЧvia the Telpor constructЧall told glowingly of a world not overcrowded, of tall grass, of odd but benign animals, of new and lovely cities built by robot-assists taken across at UN-expense to Whale's Mouth. "ButЧ"
"But," Freya said, "the peculiar fact is that it's a one-way trip."
Instantly he nodded. "Yes, that's it. No one can come back."
"That's easily explained. The Sol system is located at the axis of the universe; the recession of the extra-galactic nebulae demonstrates von Einem's Theorem One thatЧ"
"There must," he said, "out of those forty million people, be a few who want to return. But the TV and 'pape reports say they're all ecstatically happy. You've seen the endless TV shows, life at Newcolonizedland. It'sЧ"
"Too perfect, Rachmael?"
"Statistically, malcontents must exist. Why do we never hear of them? And we can't go and take a look." Because, if you went by Telpor to Whale's Mouth and saw, you were there, as they were, to stay. So if you did find malcontentsЧwhat could you do for them? Because you could not take them back; you could only join them. And he had the intuition that somehow this just wouldn't be of much use. Even the UN left Newcolonizedland alone, the countless UN welfare agencies, the personnel and bureaus newly set up by the present Secretary General Horst Bertold, from New Whole Germany: the largest political entity in EuropeЧeven they stopped at the Telpor gates. Neues Einige Deutschland . . . N.E.D. Far more powerful than the mangy, dwindling French Empire or the U.K.Чthey were pale remnants of the past.
And New Whole GermanyЧas the election to UN Secretary General of Horst Bertold showedЧwas the Wave of the Future . . . as the Germans themselves liked to phrase it.
"So in other words," Freya said, "you'd take an empty passenger liner to the Fomalhaut system, spend eighteen years in transit, you, the sole unteleported man, among the seven billion citizens of Terra, with the ideaЧor should I say, the hope?Чthat when you arrive finally at Whale's Mouth, in the year 2032, you'll find a passenger complement, five hundred or so unhappy souls who want out? And so you then can resume commercial operations . . . von Einem takes them there in fifteen minutes and then eighteen years later you return them to Terra, back home to the Sol system."
"Yes," he said fiercely.
"Plus another eighteen yearsЧfor themЧtooЧfor the flight back. For you thirty-six years in all. You'd return to Terra in the yearЧ" She calculated. "2050 A.D. I'd be sixty-one years old; Theodoric Ferry, even Horst Bertold, would be dead; perhaps Trails of Hoffman Limited wouldn't even exist, any more . . . certainly Dr. Sepp von Einem would be dead years ago; let's see: he's in his eighties now. No, he'd never live to see you reach Whale's Mouth, let alone return. So if all this is to make him feel badЧ"
"Is it insane?" Rachmael said. "To believe, first, that some unhappy persons must be stuck at Whale's Mouth . . . and yet we're not hearing, via THL's monopoly of all info media, all energy, passing back this way. And secondЧ"
"And second," Freya said, "to want to spend eighteen years of your life in getting there to rescue them." Professional, intent, she eyed him. "Is this idealism? Or is this vengeance against Dr. von Einem because of his Telpor construct that made your family's liners and commercial carriers obsolete for inter-system travel? After all, if you do manage to leave in the Omphalos, it'll be big news, a novelty; it'll be fully covered on TV and in the 'papes, here on Terra; even the UN won't be able to squelch the storyЧthe first, sole, manned vessel to go to Fomalhaut, not just one of those old-time instrument packages. Why, you'd be a time capsule; we'd all be waiting for you to arrive first there and then, in 2050, back here."
"A time capsule," he said, "like the one fired off at Whale's Mouth. Which never arrived here on Terra."
She shrugged. "Passed Terra by, was attracted by the sun's gravitational field; was swallowed up unnoticed."
"Unnoticed by any tracking station? Out of over six thousand separate monitoring devices in orbit in the Sol system none detected the time capsule when it arrived?"
Frowning, Freya said, "What do you mean to imply, Rachmael?"
"The time capsule," Rachmael said, "from Whale's Mouth, the launching of which we watched years ago on TVЧit wasn't detected by our tracking stations because it never arrived. And it never arrived, Miss Holm, because despite those crowd scenes it was never sent."
"You mean what we saw on TVЧ"
"The vid signal, via Telpor," Rachmael said, "which showed the happy masses at Whale's Mouth cheering at the vast public launching ceremony of the time capsuleЧwere fakes. I've run and rerun recordings of them; the crowd noise is spurious." Reaching into his cloak he brought out a seven-inch reel of iron oxide Ampex and tape; he tossed it onto her desk. "Play it back. Carefully. There were no people cheering. And for a good reason. Because no time capsule, containing quaint artifacts from the Fomalhaut ancient civilizations, was launched from Whale's Mouth."
"ButЧ" She stared at him in disbelief, then picked up the aud tape, held the reel uncertainly. "Why?"
"I don't know," Rachmael said. "But when the Omphalos reaches the Fomalhaut system and Whale's Mouth and I see Newcolonizedland, I'll know." And, he thought, I don't think I'll find ten or sixty malcontents out of forty million . . . by that time, of course, it'll be something like a billion colonists. I'll findЧ