"H. Beam Piper - Lone Star Planet" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)

CHAPTER I

They started giving me the business as soon as I came through the door into the Secretary's outer office.

There was Ethel K'wang-Li, the Secretary's receptionist, at her desk. There was Courtlant Staynes, the
assistant secretary to the Undersecretary for Economic Penetration, and Norman Gazarin, from Protocol,
and Toby Lawder, from Humanoid Peoples' Affairs, and Raoul Chavier, and Hans Mannteufel, and Olga
Reznik.

It was a wonder there weren't more of them watching the condemned man's march to the gibbet: the
word that the Secretary had called me in must have gotten all over the Department since the offices had
opened.

"Ah, Mr. Machiavelli, I presume," Ethel kicked off.

"Machiavelli, Junior." Olga picked up the ball. "At least, that's the way he signs it."

"God's gift to the Consular Service, and the Consular Service's gift to Policy Planning," Gazarin added.

"Take it easy, folks. These Hooligan Diplomats would as soon shoot you as look at you," Mannteufel
warned.

"Be sure and tell the Secretary that your friends all want important posts in the Galactic Empire." Olga
again.

"Well, I'm glad some of you could read it," I fired back. "Maybe even a few of you understood what it
was all about."

"Don't worry, Silk," Gazarin told me. "Secretary Ghopal understands what it was all about. All too well,
you'll find."

A buzzer sounded gently on Ethel K'wang-Li's desk. She snatched up the handphone and whispered into
it. A deathly silence filled the room while she listened, whispered some more, then hung it up.

They were all staring at me.
"Secretary Ghopal is ready to see Mr. Stephen Silk," she said. "This way, please."

As I started across the room, Staynes began drumming on the top of the desk with his fingers, the slow
reiterated rhythm to which a man marches to a military execution.

"A cigarette?" Lawder inquired tonelessly. "A glass of rum?"




There were three men in the Secretary of State's private office. Ghopal Singh, the Secretary, dark-faced,
gray-haired, slender and elegant, meeting me halfway to his desk. Another slender man, in black, with a
silver-threaded, black neck-scarf: Rudolf Kl├╝ng, the Secretary of the Department of Aggression.