"Keith Laumer - The Lighter Side" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

woman, dumpy, slack-jowled. He gestured toward the queuebana. She made a snorting sound and
ignored him. He wandered off down the Line, staring curiously at the people in it, at the varied
faces and figures, tall, wide, narrow, old, young-not so many of those-dressed in used clothing,
with hair combed or uncombed, some with facial hair, some with paint on their lips, all
unattractive in their own individual ways.
He encountered Galpert whizzing toward him on the power wheel. Galpert slowed, gaping,
came to a halt. Hestler noticed that his cousin had thin, bony ankles in maroon socks, one of
which suffered from perished elastic so that the sock drooped, exposing clay-white skin.
"Farn-what . . . ?"
"All done." Hestler held up the empty lockbox.
"All done . . . ?" Galpert looked across toward the distant Window in a bewildered way.
"All done. Not much to it, really."
"Then . . . I . . . I guess I don't need to . . . " Galpert's voice died away.
"No, no need, never again, Galpert."
"Yes, but what . . . ?" Galpert looked at Hestler, looked at the Line, back at Hestler. "You
coming, Farn?"
"I . . . I think I'll just take a walk for a while. Savor it, you know."
"Well," Galpert said. He started up the wheel and rode slowly off across the ramp.
Suddenly, Hestler was thinking about time-all that time stretching ahead, like an abyss. What
would he do with it . . . ? He almost called after Galpert, but instead turned and continued his
walk along the Line. Faces stared past him, over him, through him.
Noon came and went. Hestler obtained a dry hot dog and a paper cup of warm milk from a
vendor on a three-wheeler with a big umbrella and a pet chicken perched on the back. He walked
on, searching the faces. They were all so ugly. He pitied them, so far from the Window. He
looked back; it was barely visible, a tiny dark point toward which the Line dwindled. What did
they think about, standing in Line? How they must envy him!
But no one seemed to notice him. Toward sunset he began to feel lonely. He wanted to talk to
someone; but none of the faces he passed seemed sympathetic.
It was almost dark when he reached the End of the Line. Beyond, the empty plain stretched
toward the dark horizon. It looked cold out there, lonely.
"It looks cold out there," he heard himself say to the oatmeal-faced lad who huddled at the tail
of the Line, hands in pockets. "And lonely."
"You in Line, or what?" the boy asked.
Hestler looked again at the bleak horizon. He came over and stood behind the youth.
"Certainly," he said.
 THE PLANET WRECKERS
In his shabby room in the formerly elegant hostelry known as the Grand Atumpquah Palace,
Jack Waverly pulled the coarse weave sheet up about his ears and composed himself for sleep.
Somewhere, a voice whispered. Somewhere, boards creaked. Wind muttered around the
loosely fitted window, rattling it in its frame. The pulled-down blind clacked restlessly. In the
room above, footsteps went three paces; clank; back three paces; clank . . .
Drat the fellow, Waverly thought. Why doesn't he stop rattling his chains and go to bed? He
turned on his other side, rearranged the pillow of the consistency of bagged sawdust. Beyond the
partition, someone was whistling a strange, unmelodic tune. It was hot in the room. The sheet
chafed his neck. Next door, voices muttered with a note of urgency. Waverly made out the words
magma and San Andreas fault.
"Geology, at ten minutes past midnight?" he inquired of the mottled wallpaper. Above,
bedsprings squeaked faintly. Waverly sat up, frowning at the ceiling. "I thought the clerk said he
was putting me on the top floor," he said accusingly. He reached for the telephone on the bedside
table. A wavering dial tone went on for five seconds, then cut off with a sharp click.