"C M Kornbluth & Frederik Pohl - Critical Mass (SS Collection) UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)
"Do you want to put me and my family on the street?"
"Goodness, no, Mr. Dupoir! What we want is the sanitarium's money, including our commission. And maybe we want a little bit to make people think before they sign things, and maybe that people who should go to the county hospital go to the county hospital instead of a frankly de luxe rest home."
"I'll call you later," I said.
"Please do," said Mr. Klaw sincerely.
Tendons slack as the limp lianas, I leafed listlessly through the dhawani-bark jujus on my desk, studying Jack Denny's draftsmanship with cornucopias. The yellow stain, I noted, seemed to be spreading, even as a brother-in-law's blood might spread on the sands of the doom-pit when the cobras hissed the hour of judgment.
Mr. Horgan rapped perfunctorily on the doorframe and came in. "I had the impression, Dupoir, that you had something further to ask me at our conference this morning. I've learned to back those judgments, Dupoir."
"Well, sir-" I began.
"Had that feeling about poor old Globus," he went on. "You remember Miss Globus? Crying in the file room one day. Seems she'd signed up for some kind of charm school. Couldn't pay, didn't like it, tried to back out. They wanted their money. Attached her wages. Well, Naturally, we couldn't have that sort of financial irresponsibility. I understand she's a PFC in the WAC now. What was it you wanted, Dupoir?"
"Me, Mr. Horgan? Wanted? No. Nothing at all."
"Glad we cleared that up," he grunted. "Can't do your best work for the firm if your mind's taken up with personal problems. Remember, Dupoir. We want the country plastics conscious, and forget about those ecology freaks."
"Yes, Mr. Horgan."
"And big. Not small."
"Big it is, Mr. Horgan," I said. I rolled up Jack Denny's sketches into a thick wad and threw them at him hi the door, but not before he had closed it behind him.
Garigolli to Home Base
Listen Chief,
I appreciate your trying to work out a solution for us, but you're not doing as well as we're doing, even. Not that that's much.
We tried again to meet that constant aura of medium-of-exchange need for the Host, but he destroyed the whole lash-up again. Maybe we're misunderstanding him?
Artifacts are out. He's too big to see anything we make. Energy sources don't look promising. Oh, sure, we could elaborate lesser breeds that would selectively concentrate, for instance, plutonium or one of the uraniums. I don't think this particular Host would know the difference unless the scale was very large, and then, blooie, critical mass.
Meanwhile morale is becoming troublesome. We're holding together, but I wouldn't describe the condition as good, Vellitot has been wooing Dinnoliss in spite of the secondary directives against breeding while on exploration missions. I've cautioned them both, but they don't seem to stop. The funny thing is they're both in the male phase.
Garigolli
Between Jack Denny and myself we got about half of the month's Plastics Briefs before quitting time. Maybe they weren't big, but they were real windblown. All factors considered, I don't think it is very much to my discredit that two hours later I was moodily drinking my seventh beer in a dark place near the railroad station.
The bartender respected my mood, the TV was off, the juke box had nothing but blues on it and there was only one fly in my lugubrious ointment, a little man who kept trying to be friendly.
From time to time I gave him a scowl I had copied from Mr. Horgan. Then he would edge down the bar for a few minutes before edging back. Eventually he got up courage enough to talk, and I got too gloomy to crush him with my mighty thews, corded like the jungle-vines that looped from the towering nganga-palms.
He was some kind of hotelkeeper, it appeared. "My young friend, you may think you have problems, but there's no business like my business. Mortgage, in-
I told the bartender to give him another. How could I lose? If he passed out I'd be rid of him. If he recovered I would have his undying, doglike affection for several minutes, and what kind of shape was I in to sneer at that?
Besides, I had worked out some pretty interesting figures. "Did you know," I told him, "that if you spend $1.46 a day on cigarettes, you can save $14,752.03 by giving up smoking for 10,104 and a quarter days?"
He wasn't listening, but he wasn't weeping any more either. He was just looking lovingly at his vodka libre, or whatever it was. I tried a different tack. "When you see discarded plastic bottles bobbing in the surf," I asked, "does it make you feel like part of something grand and timeless that will go on forever?"
He glanced at me with distaste, then went back to adoring his drink. "Or do you like buzzards better than babies?" I asked.
"They're all babies," he said. "Nasty, smelly, upchucking babies."
"Who are?" I asked, having lost the thread. He shook his head mysteriously, patted his drink and tossed it down.
"Root of most evil," he said, swallowing. Then, affectionately, "Don't know where I'd be with it, don't know where I'd be without it."
He appeared to be talking about booze. "On your way home, without it?" I suggested.
He said obscurely, "Digging ditches, without it." Then he giggled. "Greatest business in the world! But oh! the worries! The competition! And when you come down to it it's all just aversion, right?"
"I can see you have a great aversion to liquor," I said politely.
"No, stupid! The guests."
Stiffly I signaled for Number Eight, but the bartender misunderstood and brought another for my friend, too. I said, "You have an aversion to the guests?"
He took firm hold on the bar and attempted to look squarely into my eyes, but wound up with his left eye four inches in front of my left eye and both our right eyes staring at respective ears. "The guests must be made to feel an aversion to alcohol," he said. "Secret of the whole thing. Works. Sometimes. But oh! it costs."
Like the striking fangs of Nag, the cobra, faster than the eye can follow, my trained reflexes swept the beer up to my lips. I drank furiously, scowling at him. "You mean to say you ran a drunk farm?" I shouted.
He was shocked. "My boy! No need to be fulgar. An 'institute,' eh? Let's leave the aversion to the drunks."
"I have to tell you, sir," I declared, "that I have a personal reason for despising all proprietors of such institutions!"
He began to weep again. "You, too! Oh, the general scorn."
"In my case, there is nothing general-"
"-the hatred! The unthinking contempt. And for what?"
I snarled. "For your blood-sucking ways."
"Blood, old boy?" he said, surprised. "No, nothing like that. We don't use blood. We use gold, yes, but the gold cure's old hat. Need new gimmick. Can't use silver, too cheap. Really doesn't matter what you say you use. All aversion-drying them out, keeping them comfy and aversion. But no blood."
He wiggled his fingers for Number Nine. Moodily I drank, glaring at him over my glass.
"In the wrong end of it, I sometimes think," he went on meditatively, staring with suspicious envy at the bartender. "He doesn't have to worry. Pour it out, pick up the money. No concern about expensive rooms standing idle, staff loafing around picking their noses, overhead going on, going on-you wouldn't believe how it goes on, whether the guests are there to pay for it or not-"
"Hah," I muttered.
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