"Heinlein, Robert A - Stranger in a Strange Land (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

Jill put a hand to her mouth and screamed.
Smith's face had been completely blank. Now it became tragically forlorn as he realized that he must have chosen wrong action at the cusp. He looked imploringly at Jill and began to tremble. His eyes rolled up; he slipped slowly down to the grass, pulled himself tightly into a fetal ball and was motionless.
Jill's own hysteria cut off as if she had thrown a switch. The change was an indoctrinated reflex: here was a patient who needed her; she had no time for her own emotions, no time even to worry or wonder about the two men who had disappeared. She dropped to her knees and examined Smith.
She could not detect respiration, nor could she find a pulse; she pressed an ear against his ribs. She thought at first that heart action had stopped completely, but, after a long time, she heard a lazy tub-dub, followed in four or five seconds by another.
The condition reminded her of schizoid withdrawal, but she had never seen a trance so deep, not even in class demonstrations of hypnoanesthesia. She had heard of such deathlike states among East Indian fakirs but she had never really believed the reports.
Ordinarily she would not have tried to rouse a patient in such a state but would have sent for a doctor at once. But these were not ordinary circumstances. Far from shaking her resolve, the events of the past few minutes had made her more determined than ever not to let Smith fall back into the hands of the authorities. But ten minutes of trying everything she knew convinced her that she could not rouse this patient with means at hand without injuring him-and perhaps not even then. Even the sensitive, exposed nerve in the elbow gave no response.
In Ben's bedroom she found a battered flight case, almost too big to be considered hand luggage, too small to be a trunk. She opened it, found it packed with voicewriter, toilet kit, a complete outfit of male clothing, and everything else that a busy reporter might need if called out of town suddenly-even to a licensed audio link to permit him to patch into phone service wherever he might be. Jill reflected that the presence of this packed bag alone tended strongly to prove that Ben's absence was not what Kilgallen thought it was, but she wasted no time thinking about it; she simply emptied the bag and dragged it into the living room.
Smith outweighed her, but muscles acquired handling patients twice her size enabled her to dump him into the big bag. Then she had to refold him somewhat to allow her to close it. His muscles resisted force, but under gentle pressure steadily applied he could be repositioned like putty. She padded the corners with some of Ben's clothes before she closed him up. She tried to punch some air holes but the bag was a glass laminate, tough as an absentee landlord's heart. She decided that he could not suffocate quickly with his respiration so minimal and his metabolic rate down as low as it must be.
She could barely lift the packed bag, straining as hard as she could with both hands, and she could not possibly carry it any distance. But the bag was equipped with "Red Cap" casters. They cut two ugly scars in Ben's grass rug before she got it to the smooth parquet of the little entrance way.
She did not go to the lobby on the roof, since another air cab was the last thing she wanted to risk, but went out instead by the service door in the basement. There was no one there but a young man who was checking an incoming kitchen delivery. He moved slowly aside and let her roll the bag out onto the pavement. "Hi, sister. What you got in the kiester?"
"A body," she snapped.
He shrugged. "Ask a jerky question, get a jerky answer. I should learn."


part two
HIS PREPOSTEROUS HERITAGE

Chapter 9

THE THIRD PLANET OUT from Sol was in its normal condition. It had on it 230,000 more human souls today than yesterday, but, among the five billion terrestrials such a minute increase was not noticeable. The Kingdom of South Africa, Federation associate member, had again been cited before the High Court for persecution of its white minority. The lords of women's fashions, gathered in solemn conclave in Rio, had decreed that hem lines would go down and that navels would again be covered. The three Federation defense stations swung silently in the sky, promising instant death to any who disturbed the planet's peace. Commercial space stations swung not so silently, disturbing the planet's peace with endless clamor of the virtues of endless trademarked trade goods. Half a million more mobile homes had set down on the shores of Hudson Bay than had migrated by the same date last year, the Chinese rice belt had been declared an emergency malnutrition area by the Federation Assembly, and Cynthia Duchess, known as the Richest Girl in the World, had dismissed and paid off her sixth husband. All was normal.
The Reverend Doctor Daniel Digby, Supreme Bishop of the Church of the New Revelation (Fosterite) had announced that he had nominated the Angel Azreel to guide Federation Senator Thomas Boone and that he expected Heavenly confirmation of his choice some time today; all the news services carried the announcement as straight news, the Fosterites having wrecked too many newspaper offices in the past. Mr. and Mrs. Harrison Campbell VI had a son and heir by host-mother at Cincinnati Children's Hospital while the happy parents were vacationing in Peru. Dr. Horace Quackenbush, Professor of Leisure Arts at Yale Divinity School, issued a stirring call for a return to faith and a cultivation of spiritual values; there was a betting scandal involving half the permanent professionals of the West Point football squad and its line coach; three bacterial warfare chemists were suspended at Toronto for presumption of emotional instability-all three announced that they would carry their cases, if necessary, to the Federation High Court. The High Court upset a ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States in re eligibility to vote in primaries involving Federation Assemblymen in the case of Reinsberg vs. the State of Missouri.
His Excellency, the Most Honorable Joseph E. Douglas, Secretary General of the World Federation of Free States, picked at his breakfast omelet and wondered peevishly why a man could not get a decent cup of coffee these days. In front of him his morning newspaper, prepared by the night shift of his information staff, moved past his eyes at his optimum reading speed in a feedback executive scanner, custom-built by Sperry. The words would flow on as long as he looked in that direction; if he turned his head, the machine would note it and stop instantly.
He was looking that way now and the projected print moved along the screen, but he was not really reading but simply avoiding the eyes of his boss across the table. Mrs. Douglas did not read newspapers; she had other ways of finding out what she needed to know.
"Joseph-"
He looked up and the machine stopped. "Yes, my dear?"
"You have something on your mind"
"Eh? What makes you say that, my dear?"
"Joseph- I haven't watched you and coddled you and darned your socks and kept you out of trouble for thirty-five years for nothing. I know when there is something on your mind."
The hell of it is, he admitted to himself, she does know. He looked at her and wondered why he had ever let her bully him into no-termination contract. Originally she had been only his secretary, back in the days (he thought of them as "The Good Old Days") when he had been a state legislator, beating the bushes for individual votes. Their first contract had been a simple ninety-day cohabitation agreement, supposedly to economize scarce campaign funds by saving on hotel bills; both of them had agreed that it was merely a convenience, with "cohabitation" to be construed simply as living under one roof . . . and she hadn't darned his socks even then!
He tried to remember how and when the situation had changed. Mrs. Douglas's official biography Shadow of Greatness: One Woman?s Story stated that he had proposed to her during the counting of ballots in his first election to office-and that such was his romantic need that nothing would do but old-fashioned, death-do-us-part marriage.
Well, he didn't remember it that way-but there was no use arguing with the official version.
"Joseph! Answer me!"
"Eh? Nothing at all, my dear. I spent a restless night."
"I know you did. When they wake you up in the middle of the night, don't you think I know it?"
He reflected that her suite was a good fifty yards across the palace from his. "How do you know it, my dear?"
"Hunh? Woman's intuition, of course. What was the message Bradley brought you?"
"Please, my dear-I've got to finish the morning news before the Council meeting."
"Joseph Edgerton Douglas, don't try to evade me."
He sighed. "The fact is, we've lost sight of that beggar Smith."
"Smith? Do you mean the Man from Mars? What do you mean: '-lost sight of-?' That's ridiculous."
"Be that as it may, my dear, he's gone. He disappeared from his hospital room sometime late yesterday."
"Preposterous! How could he do that?"
"Disguised as a nurse, apparently. We aren't sure."
"But- Never mind. He's gone, that's the main thing. What muddleheaded scheme are you using to get him back?"
"Well, we have some of our own people searching for him. Trusted ones, of course. Berquist-"
"Berquist! That garbage head! When you should have every police officer from the FDS down to precinct truant officers searching for him you send Berquist!"
"But, my dear, you don't see the situation. We can 't. Officially he isn't lost at all. You see there's--well, the other chap. The, uh, 'official' Man from Mars,"
"Oh." She drummed the table. "I told you that substitution scheme would get us in trouble."
"But, my dear, you suggested it yourself."
"I did not. And don't contradict me, Mmm ... send for Berquist. I must talk to him at once."