"The World Jones Made" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

"How much money have you got?" Hyndshaw demanded suddenly, interrupting his own pitch. Cunningly, he conjectured: "You haven't got fifty bucks to your name. You couldn't afford one of these belts."

"I've got fifty bucks," Jones said, "but not for a cheap piece of fakery."

Hyndshaw spluttered; in years of preying on ignorant rural populations, made even more fearful and superstitious by the war, he had come to believe his own lies. "What do you mean?" he began, and then shut up, as Jones told him.

"I see," Hyndshaw said, when the short, bitter tirade was done. "You're quite a kid . . . you're not afraid to say what you think."

"Why should I be?"

Tightly, Hyndshaw said: "Maybe somebody might kick your smart teeth down your throat, one of these days. Your wise-guy talk might not sit right with somebody . . . they might resent a punk kid."

"Not you," Jones told Him. "You're not going to lay a hand on me."

"What, then?"

"You're going to propose we go into business together. Your stock of belts and experience--my ability. Fifty-fifty."

"Belts? You're coming in with me on the belt business?"

"No," Jones answered. "That's your idea. I'm not interested in belts. We're going into bone-throwing."

Hyndshaw was baffled. "What's that?"

"Gambling. Dice. Craps."

"I don't know anything about gambling." Hyndshaw was deeply suspicious. "You're sure this is on the level? You're sure this isn't a goddamn come-on?"

Jones didn't bother to answer; he continued what he had been saying. "Well operate a concession at this cat house for maybe a month or so. You'll get most of the take; I'm not interested. Then we'll split up. You'll try to stop me and I'll turn the whole place in to the military police. The girls will be sent to labor camps, you'll go to prison."

Horrified, Hyndshaw gasped: "God, I don't want anything to do with you." He grabbed up a beer bottle and smashed it against a nearby rock; the jabbed teeth of glass oozed damp foam as he clutched the weapon convulsively. Repelled by the boy, he was nearing a point of hysteria. "You're crazy!" he shouted, half-lifting the bottle in an innate gesture of defense.

"Crazy?" Jones was puzzled. "Why?"

Jerkily, Hyndshaw gestured. Cold sweat leaked off his face, into his open collar "You're telling me this? You sit there telling me what you're going to do to me?"

"It's the truth."

Tossing the bottle away, Hyndshaw savagely yanked the boy to his feet. "Don't you know anything but the truth?" he snarled, in despair.

No, he didn't. How could he? For Jones there was no guessing, no error, and no false knowledge. He knew; he had absolute certainty. "Take it or leave it," he said, shrugging indifferently. He had already lost interest in the fat salesman's fate; after all, it had happened a long time ago. "Do whatever you want."

Gripping the boy futilely, Hyndshaw bellowed: "You know I'm stuck. You know I don't have a choice. You can see it!"

"Nobody has a choice," Jones said, suddenly stern and thoughtful. "Not me or you--nobody. We're all chained up like cattle. Like slaves."

Slowly, wretchedly, Hyndshaw let go of him. "Why?" he protested, raising his fat, empty hands.

"I don't know. That's something I can't tell you--yet." Jones calmly finished his beer and then tossed the bottle into the dry weeds at the edge of the road. In the last year the weeds had grown six feet high. "Let's go--I'm interested in getting into this cat house. It'll be the first time for me."