"Ing, Dean - Deathwish World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ing Dean)

He entered the sumptuous lobby of the William Penn Building, very well done in marble, beautifully furnished and decorated in an early Pennsylvania motif, and approached one of the small bank of reception desks. He sat across from the reception screen and said, "I wish to visit Lee Garrett. I believe that I am expected."
"Your identity, please, sir," the screen said.
Hamp brought forth his card, put it in the slot with his right thumb on the appropriate square.
"Thank you," the mechanical voice said.
He retrieved the credit card and relaxed in the chair.
After only a couple of minutes, the screen said, "You are expected, sir. Apartment 1012. Please take elevator seven, eight, or nine."
Hamp stood, looked about, and located the elevators. A few people in the lobby looked at him with mild surprise. Not only was he black, but his clothes, though a bit above the usual prole level, were hardly of the quality most often seen in Greenpoint. He had expected such interest and ignored it.
Elevator eight was empty. He stepped in and said, "Apartment 1012, please."
The elevator's screen said, "Your identity card, please."
He put it in the slot, pressed his thumb on the identity square of the screen.
"Thank you, sir." The door closed and the elevator smoothly began to rise.
He emerged on the tenth floor and arrived shortly at Apartment 1012. Its identity screen picked him up as he stood before it and the door opened. He entered and found himself in a small entrada.
A feminine voice called out, "In here. You'll have to forgive me, but I'm busy."
Hamp shifted his shoulders in a shrug and walked into a living room. He blinked slightly at its opulence. The Anti-Racist League had its wealthy members, but there must have been few who lived on a higher scale than this. One whole wall, facing a terrace with a superb view beyond, was glass. The furnishings were a little on the ultra-modern side, and Hamp was somewhat taken aback by its feminity. It was hardly a man's room. Could this Lee Garrett be gay?
At the far side, a young woman was busily stirring the contents of a crystal mixing glass. She concentrated as though counting the exact number of turns of the long green swizzle stick in her hand.
She looked over at him as he entered and offered a dazzling smile. "I guessed that a martini would be in order, right?"
It wasn't an autobar, and sitting on its top were an Imperial quart of British gin, whose label Hamp recognized, and a fifth of French vermouth. Excellent guzzle!
"It sounds wizard," he admitted. "Uh, my name is Horace Hampton. I had an appointment with Mr. Garrett."
"Ms. Garrett," she said, smiling again as she poured drinks into two cocktail glasses. "I'm Lee Garrett."
Hamp stared. He'd had no indication from Max Finklestein that this new contact was a youthful blonde, startlingly blue of eye, immaculately turned out and, frankly, implausibly beautiful. She wore a gold and red afternoon frock that would have cost half a year's credit to a prole on GAS. Her hairdo and her cosmetics were such that surely she had just emerged from a beauty salon, or a dressing room of an advertising agency.
She strode over gracefully, handed him one of the martinis, and smiled again, devastating him. "Shall we toast the end of all conflict?"
"I can't fight that," Hamp told her.
They sipped, Hamp taking her in all over again, not quite believing it. In real life, they just didn't come so downright pretty.
She said, "Please be seated, Mr. Hampton. I'll have to confess that this is all new to me. I've never joined any sort of organization before.''
Hamp sat on a couch and took another sip of the cocktail. "About eight to one," he judged.
"Seven," she told him. "My father's formula. He was a fanatic. A perfect martini had to be made just so. I believe he actually dropped one friend because the man insisted on putting in an olive rather than a twist of lime rind." Hamp said, "Well, I can't fault him on this formula." Lee Garrett had seated herself on the couch with him. Now she leaned forward and put her half empty glass on the cocktail table before them.
She said, "Tell me all about the Anti-Racist League, Mr. Hampton. I've read quite a bit of the standard literature this past month or so and I'm in complete agreement with your stated goals. But it occurred to me that there must be restrictions on what you can openly publish."
"How do you mean, Ms. Garrett?" He put his own glass down, empty. It had been a lifesaver. He had put away too much brandy the night before and was now wondering if she'd offer another.
She said, "Oh, call me Lee. After all, if we're to be comrades in arms, we shouldn't stand on formality."
Hamp said, "Comrades in arms call me Hamp."
"What I mean is, the League is no namby-pamby organization. But it certainly can't come right out and advocate force and violence. That's illegal. So it doesn't say that in so many words in the public literature. Is there other written material, meant only for members?"
"Not that I know of. Just what did you want to know about the League that you couldn't find in our books?"
"WellЕ" She frowned prettily. "Just about everything, I suppose. I mean, tell me all about it."
"You know, I'm surprised at your interest. Why should you be concerned with racism?" He smiled to take the edge off his words. "Back in Adolf the Aryan's day, you would have been considered the Nordic ideal."
She thought about it, finally coming up with, "Well, I suppose I'm a do-gooder, at heart. And I'm developing a bit of guilt over all this," she waved at the elegant furnishings, "when so many, especially among minoritiesЧor in some countries where the colored are actually the majorityЧhave so little and suffer so much. My father left me more than I need for the rest of my life. ButЕ well, I do nothing. I'm fed up with my friends and relatives all in the same position. I want to do something worthwhile."
Hamp nodded. "It's not an unknown reaction. Engels, the collaborator of Karl Marx, was a wealthy manufacturer. The Russian anarchist Kropotkin was a prince. Norman Thomas, the American socialist, was married to a very wealthy woman." He grinned suddenly. "But they rose above it."
"So tell me more about racism and how youЕ weЕ can go about ending it.''
Hamp took a breath and said, "You must realize that racism is one of our oldest American traditions. The United States declared its independence, utilizing some of the most noble language in the history of the fight for man's freedom, in 1776. One hundred years later marked the last major battle between the whites and American Indians. The Sioux won the battle but lost the war. One century. In that short span whole tribes disappeared. Many tens of thousands were killed outright; many more died of starvation. Some went down before the white man's diseases: measles, smallpox, and so on. At any rate, here was racism at its naked worst."
Lee nodded, her eyes serious, then glanced at his drink. "Good heavens, I'm a terrible hostess. Could I give you a refill?"
He handed his glass to her and she went over to the ornate little bar. She brought the new ones in champagne glasses, so that they were at least doubles. Hamp made no complaint.
She told him, her voice very sincere, "I couldn't agree with you more in regard to the Indians. Most white Americans will concede the Amerind got a raw deal."
"Now that it's too late," Hamp said.
"Well, but we actually invited Chinese labor." Perhaps, he thought, she was testing him.
"SureЧcoolie labor, back in the 19th century, to do manual work on the railroads. The discrimination was pretty tough. Among other things, they weren't allowed to bring over their wives and families, under the Oriental Exclusion Laws. No women at all. They resorted to all sorts of tricks to get around that. The smuggling of Chinese women into the United States from Mexico was very common. Even Jack London, in his yacht, The Snark, participated in that." He saw the blank look on her face and added, "Jack London was an American writer of the rough and tough school. Quite a radical. Damn' good man."
"Those, I like," she replied, and took more of her martini. "Goon."
"The Chinese and later Japanese were hard workers. The whites in the Western states, especially California, could see the handwriting on the wall. Soon Orientals, even when born American citizens, were forbidden to own land. The Japs, who were wonderful farmers, got around that by leasing land for ninety-nine years. They become real competition to the United Farmers, multi-millionaire whites living as far off as New York, who were the first in the world to invent so-called factories-in-the-field. These were farms of hundreds of thousands of acres, tilled by wage workers using the latest agricultural machinery and fertilizer. At any rate, the Japanese, with their driving industry, had just about achieved a monopoly in truck farming, involving a great deal of hand labor. When the Second World War came along, the whites solved this by having all Japanese on the west coast rounded up and shipped to concentration camps. Their property went for sacrifice prices. Even after the war, they never really recovered."
He took a sizable swallow of his drink and she got up to replenish his glass, bringing what remained with her to the cocktail table.
"In actuality," she told him, "I've become most interested in you blacks and what you're doing to fight back. I want to know what I can do to help."
Hamp was feeling the soothing qualities of the drink now, and stretched his legs before him in comfort. "Well," he said, "you've undoubtedly read most of it in our literature. Blacks were brought over as slaves. At least a slave had comparative security. As valuable property, he was clothed, fed, sheltered, and given some medical care. After the Civil War freed him, he worked for pay and if he became ill, injured, or old, he was fired and had no way of maintaining himself."
"Weren't lots of whites treated the same way?"