"Dick, Philip K - The Zap Gun (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"There's no such place," Lars said."

Pete glanced up. "You mean they abolished their bureau? But she's still at her desk."

"It's now under someone else, not Victor Kamow. He disappeared. A lung condition. It's now calledЧ" Lars turned up the memo he had taken from the KACH-man's report. In Peep-East this happened continually: he attached no importance to itЧ"Minor Protocides, Subdivision Crop-production, Archives. Of Bulganingrad. A branch of Middle Auton-tool Safety Standards Ministry, which is their cover for their non-bacteriological warfare research agencies of every kind. As you know." He bumped heads with Pete, inspecting the fuzzy glossy-print of Lilo Topchev, as if time alone might have brought from the blur a more accessible image.

"What is it," Pete said, "that obsesses you?"

Lars shrugged, "Nothing. Divine discontent maybe." He felt evasive; the engineer from Lanferman Associates was too keen an observer, too capable.

"No, I meanЧbut firstЧ"

Pete expertly ran his sensitive, long, stained-dark fingers along the underside of Lars' desk, seeking a monitoring device. Finding none immediately at hand he continued. "You're a scared man. Do you still take pills?"

"No."

"You're lying."

Lars nodded. "I'm lying."

"Sleeping bad?"

"Medium."

"If that horse's ass Nitz has got your goatЧ"

"It's not Nitz. To reshuffle your picturesque language that goat's horse. Nitz has not got my ass. So are you satisfied? Sir?"

Pete said, "They can groom replacements for you for fifty years and not come up with anyone like you. I knew Wade. He was okay but he wasn't in the same league as you. No one is. Especially not that dame in Bulganingrad."

"It's nice of you," Lars began, but Pete cut him savagely off.

"NiceЧschnut! Anyhow, that's not it."

"No," Lars agreed. "That's not it and don't insult Lilo Topchev."

Fumbling in his shirt pocket Pete brought out a cheap, drugstore-style cigar. He lit up, puffed its noxious fumes until the office dissolved and reeked. Oblivious, without giving a damn, Pete wheezed the smoke in and out, silent as he pondered.

He had this virtue/defect: anything puzzling, he believed, if worried at long enough, could be elucidated. In any area. Even that of the human psyche. The machine was no more and no less complicated, according to him, than biological organs created by two billions years of evolution.

It was, Lars thought, an almost childishly optimistic view; it dated from the eighteenth century. Pete Freid, for all his manual skills, his engineering genius, was an anachronism. He had the outlook of a bright seventh-grader.

"I've got kids," Pete said, chewing on his cigar, making a bad thing worse. "You need a family."

"Sure," Lars said.

"No, I'm not serious."

"Of course you are. But that doesn't make you right. I know what's bothering me. Look."