"Ron Goulart - Nemo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

Nemo
Ron Goulart
Copyright ┬й 1977, by Ron Goulart


Chapter 1
Ted Briar screamed.
His narrow bed jiggled him gently and asked, "Another nasty dream?"
Not really a bad dream, no. Not something you'd bother a
psychotherapist like his wife's with, or even one of those coin-operated
'bot analysts they have in airport and hotel lobbies. Yet every time Ted had
the dream, he fought, breathing hard and thrashing, to get out of it.
Ted sat up, eyes and mouth wide open, and looked around his
gunmetal-gray sleeping pit.
What was there in the damned dream to do this to him, two or three
times a week lately? Actually it was more a comedy than a horror dream.
Ted would be walking down a street in some impossibly pleasant small
town in a last-century town, the kind of town which had vanished long
before he was born. It was always a warm summer day and he'd be
wearing an ankle-length old-fashioned nightgown. Nobody seemed to
notice. And he was carrying some kind of heavy suitcase.
The thing was, if he ever delivered that suitcase where it was supposed
to be delivered somebody was going to die. That was why he always had to
scream himself away from there.
Shaking his head, Ted mumbled to himself, "Don't be stupid." He
squinted in the direction of the wall clock.
A thin wire arm snaked up from under the bed, and after squirting two
squirts of a liquid, poked Ted's contact lenses into place on his eyeballs.
"It's six-seventeen A.M. if it's the chronometers you're trying to see," said
the soft narrow bed. "Six-seventeen going on six-eighteen, that's the
time."
 Ted rasped his tongue over his upper teeth. "Is Haley home yet?" He
found he had a strong compulsion to blink.
"No, nope, she's not," replied the speaker mechanism in the
computerized bed. "Would you like a cup of coffee-like cereal beverage or
perhaps some nice warm soymilk?"
Ted kept blinking, rubbing at his eyes. "What the hell did you spray in
my eyes instead of antipollution mist?"
"Golly, I'm not sure. Could it have been, maybe, protein-rich hair
conditioner? I'm doing my best, but I really do need a tuneup. You haven't
had a house mechanic in for a long time, you know."
"We're on the damn waiting list. They can't come till April 22, 2021.
Next year."
Another thin metal arm appeared, holding a cup of something
steaming. "Sniff this and see if it's coffee-like cereal beverage, will you?"
Ted sniffed. "Nope."
"Listen, how about you go back to sleep for maybe fifteen minutes while
I get myself straightened out?"
"No, I never sleep very well the nights Haley's working up at the
Dynamo Hill Children's Hospital." When Ted swung his feet over the edge