"Joe Haldeman - A Tangled Web" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

office.
Estelle Dorring stared at me when I walked into the office. "Ricardo! You look like a
corpse warmed over."
"Rough night," I said. "Touch of food poisoning."
"I never eat that Tang stuff."
"Good policy." I set the envelope in front of her. "I'm not sure whether to send this or not.
If I don't come get it before the next shuttle, take it to Armpit and give it to the next Earth
courier."
She nodded slowly and read the address. "Why so mysterious?"
 "Just a matter of Guild ethics. I wanted to write it down while it was still fresh. Uh ..." I'd
never seen a truly penetrating stare before. "But I might have more information tonight that
would invalidate it."
"If you say so, Ricardo." She slipped the envelope into a drawer. I backed out, mumbling
something inane.
Down to Slim Joan's for a sandwich of stir-fried vegetables in Syrian bread. Slightly
rancid and too much curry, but I didn't dare go to the Council meeting on an empty stomach;
!tang sonar would scan it and they would make a symbolic offer of bread, which couldn't be
refused. Estelle was partly right about "Tang" food: one bite of the bread contained enough
mescaline to make you see interesting things for hours. I'd had enough of that for a while.
I toyed with the idea of taking a weapon. There was a rental service in the pharmacy, to
accommodate the occasional sporting type, and I could pick up a laser or a tranquilizer there.
But there would be no way to conceal it from the !tang sonar. Besides, Lafitte wasn't the
kind of person who would employ direct violence.
But if it actually were the Syndicate behind Lafitte, they might well have sent more than
one person here; they certainly could afford it. A hitter. But then why would Lafitte set up
the elaborate poisoning scene? Why not simply arrange an accident?
My feet were taking me toward the pharmacy. Wait. Be realistic. You haven't fired a gun
in twenty years. Even then, you couldn't hit the ground with a rock. If it came to a burnout,
you'd be the one who got crisped. Better to leave their options open.
I decided to compromise. There was a large clasp knife in my bag; that would at least help
me psychologically. I went back up to my room.
I thumbed the lock and realized that the cube I'd heard playing was my own. The door slid
open and there was Lafitte, lounging on my sofa, watching an old movie.
"Dick. You're looking well."
"How the hell did you get in here?"
He held up his thumb and stripped a piece of plastic off the fleshy part. "We have our
resources." He sat up straight. "I hear you're taking a flyer out to Pa'an!al. Shall we divide
the cost?"
There was a bottle of wine in a bucket of ice at his feet. I got a glass out of the bathroom
and helped myself. "I suppose you charged this to my room." I turned off the cube.
He shrugged. "You poked me for dinner last night, mon frere. Passing out like that."
I raised the glass to my lips, flinched, and set it down untouched. "Speaking of resources,
what was in that brandy? And who are these resourceful friends?"
"The wine's all right. You seemed agitated; I gave you a calmative."
"A horse calmative! Is it the Syndicate?"
He waved that away. "The Syndicate's a myth. YouтАФ"
"Don't take me for an idiot. I've been doing this for almost as long as you have." Every ten
years or so there was a fresh debunking. But the money and bodies kept piling up.
"You have indeed." He concentrated on picking at a hangnail. "How much is Starlodge
willing to pay?"