"Dickson, Gordon - Stranger Txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Gordon Dickson - The Stranger

God Bless Them

"Nobody in Congress or the federal government or the public has put forward a case for a U.S. manned Mars Mission," Press said in an interview. "And if the Soviets decide to spend $70 billion to land men on Mars in five years, we say: God bless them."

ЧLos Angeles Times reprinted in the Minneapolis Star. Thursday, October 12, 1978 Ч(from an interview with Frank Press, science adviser to U.S. President James Carter and chairman of the presidential review committee whose four-month study formed the basis for Carter's policy statement on the space effort.)

There was no mail at the Main Minneapolis Post Office for Merlin Swenson. Almost no one got any mail at General Delivery on Mondays now. But people went there, anyway, although lately the air conditioning was always off.

Merlin left the post office and walked slowly the twenty-seven blocks to the slave market. It was a blue-bright July morning, already turning hot, and he could feel the heat of the sidewalk through the thin soles of his shoes. At Twelfth Avenue and Third Street, he stepped on something hard and stopped in a panic to check the sole of the right shoe. But whatever it was, he discovered, standing on one foot, had not gone throughЧalthough the sole was now like soft cardboard and gave at a touch.

He started walking again. The shoes would be too expensive for him to replace, these days, and there was no hope of getting any worthwhile work without them. When the soles finally wore through there would be several things he could do to patch them, temporarily, but it would be the beginning of the end. And it was inevitable that they would wear through. Any day now.

In the narrow waiting room of the slave market, the hard, upright chairs along the walls were all filled. The air conditioning, roaring from the ventilator grills, barely removed the stink of unwashed bodies. Merlin, himself, was clean this morning. It had cost him, but this was a special day.

"You planning to work dressed like that?" asked the hiring clerk behind the desk. His narrow, white face, under an upright shock of brown hair, was pinched by an expression of habitual annoyance.

"I am if you can get me something clean for half a day," Merlin said. In the mirror tile behind the clerk's desk he saw his own face, square, large-boned, trained now to show no expression at all. "I've got an engineering job interview this afternoon."

"Oh?" said the clerk, staring at his computer screen. He punched the keys of the terminal. "All right. You're on the half-day list. I can tell you right now there's not much chance."

"I could manage another ten percent," Merlin said.

The clerk's shrug told the true story. It was too much to expect a clean job somewhere for just half a day. Still, the chance could'not be passed up. Money was everything.

Merlin waited for a chair; then, sitting, he tried to rest with his eyes open. You could lose your connection with a place like this if they caught you dropping offЧthat explained the hard chairs and the icy air conditioning. Everybody wanted a safe place to sleep. But this was the best of the slave markets. They were honest and made a specialty of hiring people who had degrees. The Qualified Laborer is a Conscientious Laborer was their slogan. Merlin drifted into a mindless period hearing nothing until the man next to him began reading aloud from a morning newspaper.

" "All hope of possible U.N. assistance for the U.S. economy seemed doomed today in light of comment by the Soviet Representative, Anatoly Pirapich, that this country had historically refused to fund its space program adequately and that aid now to U.S. orbital industries, in particular, would be an open invitation to impoverished nations to-rely on other countries for large investment capital.

" 'Pirapich read aloud in session a 1978 quote from the Los Angeles Times, reprinted in the Minneapolis Star on October twelfth of that year:

"The While House statement says America's civil space policy centers on these tenets: that activities will reflect a balanced strategy of application, science and technology development... it is neither feasible nor necessary at this time to commit the U.S. to a highchallenge space engineering initiative comparable to Apollo..."'"

The man stopped reading, folded his paper and turned to Merlin.

"Can you imagine that?" he said. "Just fifteen years ago, a White House statement says that. What were they using for brains?"

"What good does it do to keep re-reading that sort of thing?" Merlin said dully. "It doesn't change anything."

"But how could anyone be so blind?"

It was a trite question. Merlin felt no urge to answer, but he was not surprised to hear it asked. Although probably his own age, the other man had the kind of appearance that made him seem barely out of adolescence. Curly black hair, slight body, pale faceЧan innocent in a time when innocents got eaten for breakfast. Merlin had never seen him before.

"Does it matter now?" Merlin finally said.

"There'd still be a chance for this country if..." The other broke off. "Oh, my name's Sam Church. My degree's in electronics. How about you?"

"Flow mechanics, gravityless."