"Robert Goulart - Gadget Man" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Robert)

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A grass-stained baseball came plummeting from above, accompanied by shards and flakes of dusty glass. Hecker hopped through the wild columbine, yarrow, and monkshood and caught the ball. "The game's resumed," he said.
Jane Kendry was yards away, near one blurred glass-panel wall of the overgrown park greenhouse. "Don't be so patronizing," she said.
Opening the brass grillwork and stained-glass door of the greenhouse, Hecker threw the ball out toward the picnic-ground playing field. "Here you go, Milo."
Jane was wearing tan shorts, a pale-blue pullover, and tan moccasins. She kept dragging one slightly hooked finger down through her auburn hair, giving an angry twist at the end. "Second Lieutenant Same may have Jack."
Hecker made his way over a plank parkway, through wild primroses, zinnias, and milkweed. "I could check in with Social Wing headquarters. See if they know anything. But I'm fairly sure Same must have some way of tapping S.W.'s communications. Since I can refrain from reporting in while I'm on field assignments, I think I will. It's safer at the moment." He got ten feet closer to Jane, and she moved ten feet further away.
"Jack probably got away and went someplace by himself," said Jane. "He's a loner. He's like me. Freer, since he's still really a boy." She hugged herself, her breasts moving closer together. Her shoulders hunched slightly. "I think I may go
I with you. To check out Westlake. I haven't quite decided."
Hecker said. "Okay. When?"
Jane picked a yellow daisy. "We'll be organizing a raid, planning it today. The actual sortie should be tomorrow. I'm waiting for my scout party to get here. After the raid, two days from now, I'll be able to go to the Santa Monica area."
"I can go now and investigate the former Vice-president myself," said Hecker. "I don't have to wait two days. Just tell me whatever else you know about Gadget Man, about the riots, and I'll move on."
"Why can't you relax, Hecker. Wait." She smiled a slightly puckered smile. "You can't simply go away from here anyhow. You're supposed to be Cousin Jim, remember. Here to help out. There are men posted all around here, watching in all directions. Incoming and outgoing. You couldn't get far."
"The same guys who kept Same away from the conclave last night?"
"No, my own choice," said Jane. "They haven't been celebrating."
Hecker didn't reply.
Jane continued, "You come along on the raid, in my group. If I decide to go along, we can take off from there. If not, it'll be easier for you to get off unnoticed."
Hecker watched the petals from the daisy as Jane tore them free one by one. "Okay," he said. "Your way, then."
"Makes you feel better, doesn't it?" said the pretty girl. "Taking orders. They trained you for that. A yes-sir person they made you into."
Now an arm's reach from her, Hecker said, "Worry about your adopted brother, that's okay. But don't mix me up with what you're mad at."
"Rehab Center crap," said Jane. "Find a reason for this girl's hostility. All the anger. Not the real reason, but some kind of polite sweep-it-under-the-rug reason. Trauma over maternal loss during early pubescent years." She breathed in hard through her nostrils. "They killed her in the street, Hecker. Yeah, it made me angry. Yes, sir. I was quite impressed at the time."
Hecker put a knotty hand on her bare shoulder. "Easy now."
The colored-glass door smashed open and Jess Kendry came in, stepping over bright fragments of yellow, gold, red, scarlet, orange, purple glass. "What sort of tъte-a-tъte is this, for Christ sake?" he said. His fine white hair was high and tangled, giving his head a bashed-in look. His tan, leathery face was overlaid with a pink flush. "Some kind of incest among blood kin do I see before me? Janey, Janey, what is all this?"
Jane reached up and touched the hand Hecker still had on her shoulder. "He'll be okay in a while," she said quietly to Hecker. "Sometimes this happens. Stay back here for a bit." She walked to her father, hunched a little and hugging herself again. "Cousin Jim is only a relative by marriage in the first place, Dad. And secondly, we're just talking about the raid."
"What raid? What raid, Janey?" He tripped among the wild marigolds, stumbled to his knees. "Why do you favor this damn hothouse? It's too hot. It's hot, Janey, this hothouse. Christ."
Jane helped him to rise. "Who have you been with?"
"Uncle Fred and I were up in the elephant house with a couple of bottles of smuggled rye, Janey," said Jess Kendry. "Listen, Janey, this business last night. I'm all spun around. I'm losing my nerve, honey. You see? Listen, Janey, I promised you I'd not let it upset me. Not lose my nerve. Jesus, I can't hold on."
Jane stood straight and put her arm around her father. "Everybody gets frightened. There are real dangers. You know that, and you handled things well last night. It's okay you're afraid sometimes."
Jess began to cry. "No, it's more than that, Janey. I'm so goddamn old, Janey. They can kill me so easy now, honey."
"No, they can't," said the girl. She walked him toward the smashed doorway. "You go over to the bunk area and lie down, Dad. I'll wake you for lunch."
"That's a good idea, Janey," said Jess. "I will. Sleep it off."
Piano music sounded out on the picnic ground. A moment later, Milo Kendry appeared in the greenhouse doorway. "Hey, Jess, come on out and play something for us."
"You got a piano out there?" asked Jess, laughing now.
"The twins just dragged it in," explained Milo. "They stole it from a teenage bordello down in Baja. Smuggled the damn thing all the way up here."
"Those crazy goddamn twins," grinned Jess. "Janey, come on and I'll play you a song. I haven't touched a piano in months. That's very thoughtful of the twins. Isn't it, Janey?"
"Yes, Dad. You go on. I'll be there soon." After Jess and Milo had gone, she came back to Hecker. "I'll be with my father for a while. We can talk again later." She left.
Hecker stayed inside the greenhouse even after the music started outside.
CHAPTER 5
The lion house had been turned into a briefing room. A blackboard borrowed from a defunct junior high school was wired up to the bars of one of the shadowy, empty wall cages. Using a carpenter's ruler, Jess Kendry was chalking in a street map. He kept his tongue in the corner of his mouth as he drew the lines, his shoulders slightly bent. On a large square he lettered in MOTHER OF CHRIST HOSPITAL. He paused, rubbed the tip of the chalk against his chin. Then he turned and walked slowly and carefully to the scatter of folding chairs and wooden crates in the center of the vaulted room. Jane was sitting on a tipped slat crate, her knees under her chin, her arms hugging her legs. "I really am sorry, Jane," Jess said. "You know how I get sometimes. Don't be mad."
Jane looked up, but not quite at him. "I'm not."
Hash, slouched in a folding chair labeled DUMLER & GIROUX FUNERAL SERVICES, said, "I heard Milo and some of his buddies talking as if they plan to raise a little extra hell on this raid, Jess."
Jess moved away from his daughter, glanced around at the two-dozen guerrillas in the room. "No more than usual, Hash. We don't have to debate the point any more. We're agreed on the use of a certain amount of terror."
Hecker's wooden chair grated on the decorative tiles of the floor as he put it a few feet nearer to Jane. "I'm just a guest, Cousin Jess," he said. "Still, I had the idea we're raiding this town of San Cabrito for the purpose of getting medical supplies from that Mother of Christ Hospital."
Back at the blackboard, Jess tapped the hospital on the map when Hecker mentioned it. "Exactly, Cousin Jim. However, we like to unsettle the populace if we can. When people hurt, they're more likely to listen. When they listen, then they'll hear what Jane and Hash and some of the rest of us are trying to say. That the Junta is no good. That the Junta has to be replaced by a more democratic government."
Hash began rolling himself a fresh marijuana cigarette. "I think Milo and Rollo and their bunch out to concentrate on doing their assigned jobs and forget about providing terror for the teenage girls of San Cabrito."
"There won't be any more incidents like that," Jess assured him. "We've kicked that around enough, Hash. Stop envying the boys their high spirits."
"We need supplies," said Hash, licking the cigarette, "not recreation for Milo and Rollo and the boys. I figure we'd have a smoother raid if we left all the high-spirited fellows here to play softball."
Jess resumed chalking in the names of key streets and buildings of San Cabrito. "We need fifty or sixty men to bring this sortie off right, Hash. The twenty-five of us who do the planning and lead the raids, we need the others. An army can't be... "
"All generals. You need privates, too. Foot soldiers and fighting men. Men who think less and fight more," finished Jane. "We know, Father. Just because we have a guest, there's no need to repeat our entire last dozen meetings for him. I'm sure he's seen enough squabbles."
"Right, Janey," said her father. He grinned over at Hecker. "Okay. Here on the run-down stretch of the old Highway l01 is the Police Corps hut. Two and a quarter miles south of the San Cabrito turnoff. There are six P.C. men there now, according to our scouts. Henry, you and your group have to take them out. The way is up to you. We want no contact between them and the bigger P.C. stations, and we want no warnings to get out to the Republic of Southern California Army. Keep their P.C. hoppers on the ground, too. How many is it they have?"
"Three," said Jane. She frowned at the wide, bald Henry Kendry. "I think we ought to talk, very carefully, about Henry's . part in the raid."