"William Morrison & Frederik Pohl - Stepping Stone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morrison William)

needed. But there was more:
"To fireтАФ"
A flame-thrower squirted a flaring blob of napalm; it clung to the Viceroy's halo; flickered; went out.
"To atomic energy"тАФ Chesley half roseтАФ"but I shall not demonstrate that at this time, as too many
of you would be casualties. Now you may go. My peace be with you."
And the halo flared white, and he was gone.
Chesley slowly joined the fleeing crowd.
 Such things, Chesley realized, could be faked. But they impressed him none the less. And they
impressed a lot of other peopleтАФfor example, the man who went through the exit turnstile ahead of
Chesley, who was in such a sweat that he raced through without stopping to pick up his five-dollar-bill,
leaving it for ChesleyтАФalong with Chesley's own.
He came home with ten dollars and change and his wife, for the first time in some years, was
immensely pleased.
So were a very few other persons throughout the worldтАФnearly one half of whom had seen the
Viceroy in person or on television, or had heard his voice on the radio. But even they didn't stay pleased,
not for very long.

II

By the time that most of the world's population was very displeased indeed, Chesley's wife was
sayingтАФor screeching:
"Stepping stone! Now you've done it, Arthur, you've stepped your stepping stone right out of a job
entirely! How are we going to face my mother, Arthur? How? I ask you, how can I go to see her in her
new thirty-five-thousand dollar house and tell her the man I married over her objections is fired? And
what about these taxes? We can't pay them, you know that! If you were half a man you'd go to work in
the V.G. like Elsie Morgenstern's husband down the block. They don't have to worry about where their
next meal is coming from andтАФ And what about those people that were blown up yesterday? They were
out of a job. The Viceroy just killed them all, killed them, and I'd like to know what would happen to me
ifтАФ Arthur! Now, come back here!"
Harry swabbed a damp cloth over the bar and looked up morosely. "What'll it be, Arthur?
Reeky-Cola, lemon fizz, a shot of ginger ale?"
"I'll take milk," said Chesley, sliding onto a stool. It wasn't the same, of course. Taking one
consideration with another, Chesley thought judiciously, the Viceroy hadn't done a bad job of
reorganizing the Earth in five weeks, even if his most recent step was to abolish the production of certain
synthetic rubber articles which, in turn, abolished Chesley's job. But he shouldn't have prohibited beer.
Harry poured the milk glumly and leaned on the bar, watching Chesley sip it. "You know Flaherty?"
he asked. "Well, he was one of them that got it yesterday."
"Flaherty? Ronald Flaherty?" Chesley was shocked. "You mean he was in that bunch of out-of-work
people that the Viceroy kiтАФ"
"They was misled by corrupt agitators," Harry interrupted.
"Oh, no, Harry. I mean, Flaherty wasn'tтАФ"
"They was misled by corrupt agitators," Harry repeated with great emphasis, and he nodded his head
toward the back of the bar. Where stacks of bottles once had been, now there was a floral display
around a placard that read:
Loyalty to the Viceroy is every Earthling's first duty.
-THE VICEROY
And under the placard, a microphone.
"I see what you mean," Chesley said quickly. "Yeah, they certainly were misled by corrupt
agitators."
He tasted his milk, and the milk wasn't sourтАФno, no milk was sour, not after the Viceroy had made a