"Sean McMullen - Alone in His Chariot" - читать интересную книгу автора (McMullen Sean)

"Don't act like you're two years old." Mistake. Should have got up and sat near the driver. Stinging slap
over the ear. Arm twisted, face ground into dirty floor. Big kids laugh, nobody helps.
"Who's a two year old?" demands Jason Dodsworth.
"Not you. Leggo!"
"Where's your manners? Say please."
"Please. Please."
"Hey, don't you go killing anyone on my bus!" shouts the driver. Nobody helps. Sickeningly hard kick
between the cheeks of the arse. Can't shit without crying for days.
Vuner stepped from the bus, but the memory of the old outrage remained, clean, raw and strong.
Jay-Dod. Big Jason Dodsworth. How he would like to meet up with him now. He would learn aikido or
something, and beat Jay-Dod until he wished he had never been born.
He knew where his former tormentor lived. The man was prominent and successful, a member of the
local council, and married to the mayor's daughter. The memory of that day on the bus burned bright and
clear, though worse things had happened to Vuner at school, even at the hands of Jay-Dod.
Change buses. Walk. Hide in the garden. Nobody home. Have to wait. Waited so long, why not wait
some more? Wait till he comes home in his Jaguar. Learned aikido, know how to fight. Use a fence
picket, brain his pretty little wife, hit him in the guts to knock the noise out of him, then beat, beat, beat.
Beat to hurt, beat to leave scars, beat to humiliate. Start on his wife. Make him watch.
Vuner awoke the next morning with his bedclothes tangled and drenched in perspiration. He sat bolt
upright with the memory that he had committed two murders and a rape! He'd been there, he'd done it
himself. His clock-radio delivered the morning news, but there was nothing about a local councillor being
murdered.
He examined his hands. They were scratched and dirty. His clothes were muddy as well. There were
roadworks down the street, and he remembered stumbling and falling on the rough ground. That might
explain it, but he also remembered hiding in the Dodsworths' garden, and just as clearly. He showered
thoroughly and washed his clothes. There was another newscast, but still nothing about any murders.
Perhaps they had not been discovered.
On the way to work Vuner stopped at a public telephone and called Dodsworth's office. His secretary
answered.
"Is, ah, Mr Dodsworth in this morning?" he asked.
"No, I'm afraid not," she answered. Vuner's knees buckled.
"Can I get him to return your call?"
"No! No, I'm driving around a lot today."
"Well, he's at a Council meeting until noon. Would you like to try then?"
"You - you've seen him?" gasped Vuner.
"Yes. He came in about ten minutes ago to check the mail. Now who shall I tell him to expect a call
from?"
Vuner hung up, tears of relief streaming down his face. It was the TEFG-7. Christ, no wonder the rats
were 'pondering', he said to himself as he got up. It turns dreams into real memories.
Vuner watched Cottak go into the Project Manager's office with a limp rat. He also noticed that she had
left the TEFG drip line dangling. He waited for a minute. If anyone was watching a security monitor, they
would have seen the fluid dripping into the sawdust of the staging pen, and come out to stop it.
Deftly he took the TEFG bottle down and ran a little into the phial while pretending to fumble with the
drip tube. By the time Cottak returned he had sealed the bottle and was washing the tube.
"You left the TEFG solution dripping into the sawdust," he said calmly. "I thought I'd better seal it up for
you."
"Thanks, thanks," she replied, placing the rat in the staging pen and reconnecting the encephalograph
wires to its head. A screen trace showed strong, clear brain activity.
"I thought it might be hard to make, or expensive," he said with a voice so carefully held in check that it
sounded wooden.