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

Church nodded, his face suddenly wary.

"Go in there right now," said Merlin. "You may be able to get hired yourself. Tell the secretary you heard about it at the post officeЧanything. Just don't tell them I sent you. The name of the outfit is Trans- Space Electronics. Remember, you didn't hear about it from me."

Church stared as if he had just heard some unknown language. Then his eyes opened wide. He spun on his heel, ran to the entrance of the offices and let himself in.

Merlin departed, clutching his check and the other papers.

His transportation vouchers got him on the evening flight to Salt Lake City. He boarded carrying a new suitcase with nothing but his old clothes and shoes in it. After being so poor for so long, he found he could not bring himself to throw things away.

It was only the first of his conflicts with the unconscious habits of near-starvation. When he got to the training camp at Huntsville, he found the Reception Center closed for the day and only the thought of the consequences to his employment record, if he should be picked up for vagrancy, drove him to a hotel. There, in the palatial privacy of his smgle room, in the luxury of his mattressed bed, he finally fell asleep.

In the morning he reported to the Reception Center. He was put through processing, presented with a schedule of refresher and training classes and as- signed to a barracks with other new employees. The barracks were two-story wood frame buildings, with a large dormitory room upstairs and a day room and a latrine downstairs. White partitions surrounded the individual beds in the dormitories, giving each employee the privacy of a tiny cubicle.

There were no women in the barracks. He was told that new employees were segregated by sex, even those husband-and-wife pairs who had signed their five-year employment contracts together.

In the latrine he found showers in which hot water was available day and night. Soap and towels were provided. Although he understood that this must be characteristic of newcomers like himself, he was unable to resist the luxury of immediately soaking himself in the shower.

He was stepping out of the shower when he saw a familiar-looking man standing at one of the washbasins. He circled to get a glimpse of the other's face, reflected in the long mirror above the washstands. It was Church.

"You made it!" he said.

Church turned around.

"Yes, I made it!" he said. They shook hands solemnly.

"I didn't see you at any of the processing sessions," Merlin said, wrapping a towel around his waist.

"I had some special interviews," said Church. "I'm to be considered for cadre. It could mean a move to better quarters."

"Cadre?" Merlin stared at him. "1 thought all cadre would be previous employees."

"I think they'd rather have it that way. But this project's expanding so fast..."

"But how did you get picked for that?"

"Well..." Church looked at the open door to the latrine. He stepped over so he could see through it, then stepped back again. "I think they picked me because I told them I'd had experience. Didn't you?"

"How could I? I haven't ever been in space."

"Well, neither have I, of course. But it doesn't hurt to fib a little. By the time they check, they'll have already tried you out in a position. If they like what you've done, then it doesn't matter, and if they're displeased, then you just tell them you didn't understand the original question or blame it on computer error. They're not going to go to the trouble of checking personally with whoever it was that hired you."

"It could still catch up with you," Merlin said.

"Oh, I don't think so." Church's manner was almost airy. "Well, I've got to run. One of the advantages of being considered like this is that I can phone from the offices, instead of standing in line like the rest of you. I told my wife I'd call."

"Yes, see you later," said Merlin.

He watched the other man go. Later, dressed and standing in line himself at the phone booths in the communications building, he felt his first touch of envy. Even if Church's lie caught up with him, it was almost worth it not to have to'wait here like this. The camp had a direct satellite hookup. Long-distance phone charges could be put against your first sixmonths' salary. Everyone just hired was desperate to talk with someone, with the mail as unreliable as it was and the cost of ordinary phoning astronomically out of reach.