"Pohl, Frederik - The Richest Man in Levittown (txt)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pohl Frederick)

The Richest Man in Levittown

MARGERY tried putting the phone back on the hook, but it immediately rang again. She kicked the stand, picked up the phone and said: "Hang up, will you? We don't want any!" She slammed the phone down to break the connection and took it off the hook again.
The doorbell rang.
"My turn," I said, and put down the paper-it looked as though I never would find out what the National League standings were. It was Patrolman Gamelsfelder.
"Man to see you, Mr. Binns. Says it's important." He was sweating-you could see the black patches on his blue shirt. I knew what he was thinking . We had air conditioning and money, and he was risking his life day after day for a lousy policeman's pay, and what kind of a country was this anyhow? He'd said as much that afternoon.
"It might be important to him, but I don't want to see anybody. Sorry, officer." I closed the door.
Margery said: "Are you or are you not going to help me change the baby?"
I said cheerfully: "I'll be glad to, dear." And it was true-besides being good policy to say that, since she was pretty close to exploding. It was true because I wanted something to do myself. I wanted some nice, simple, demanding task like holding a one-year-old down with my knee in the middle of his chest, while one hand held his feet and the other one pinned the diaper. I mean, it was nice of Uncle Otto to leave me the money, but did they have to put it in the paper?
The doorbell rang again as I was finishing. Margery was upstairs with Gwennie, who took a lot of calming down because she'd had an exciting day, and because she always did, so I stood the baby on his fat little feet and answered the door myself. It was the policeman again. "Some telegrams for you, Mr. Binns. I wouldn't let the boy deliver them."
"Thanks." I tossed them in the drawer of the telephone stand. What was the use of opening them? They were from people who had heard about Uncle Otto and the money, and who wanted to sell me something.
"That fellow's still here," Patrolman Gamelsfelder said sourly. "I think he's sick."
"Too bad." I tried to close the door.
"Anyway, he says to tell Cuddles that Tinker is here."
I grabbed the door. "Tell Cud. . ."
"That's what he said." Gamelsfelder saw that that hit me, and it pleased him. For the first time he smiled.
"What-what's his name?"
"Winston McNeely McGhee," said Officer Gamelsfelder happily, "or anyway that's what he told me, Mr. Binns."
I said, "Send the son of a- Send the fellow in," I said, and jumped to get the baby away from the ashtray where Margery had left a cigarette burning. Winnie McGhee-it was all I needed to finish off my day.

He came in holding his head as though it weighed a thousand pounds. He was never what you'd call healthy-looking, even when Margery stood me up at the altar in order to elope with him. It was his frail, poetic charm, and maybe he still had that, and maybe he didn't, but the way he looked to me, he was sick, all right. He looked like he weighed a fast hundred pounds not counting the head; the head looked like a balloon. He moaned, "Hello, Harlan, age thirty-one, five-eleven, one seventy-three. You got an acetylsalicylic acid tablet?"
I said, "What?" But he didn't get a chance to answer right away because there was a flutter and a scurry from the expansion attic and Margery appeared at the head of the stairs. "I thought-" she began wildly, and then she saw that her wildest thought was true. "You!" She betrayed pure panic-fussing with her hair with one hand and smoothing her Bermuda shorts with the other, simultaneously trying to wiggle, no-hands, out of the sloppy old kitchen apron that had been good enough for me.
McGhee said pallidly, "Hello. Please, don't you have an acetylsalicylic acid tablet?"
"I don't know what it is," I said simply.
Margery chuckled ruefully. "Ah, Harlan, Harlan," she said with fond tolerance, beaming lovingly at me as she came down the stairs. It was enough to turn the stomach of a cat.
"You forget, Winnie. Harlan doesn't know much chemistry. Won't you find him an aspirin, Harlan? That's all he wants."
"Thanks," said Winnie with a grateful sigh, massaging his temples.
I went and got him an aspirin. I thought of adding a little mixer to the glass of water that went with it, but there wasn't anything in the medicine chest that looked right, and besides it's against the law. I don't mind admitting it, I never liked Winnie McGhee, and it isn't just because he swiped my bride from me. Well, she smartened up after six months, and then, when she turned up with an annulment and sincere repentance-well, I've never regretted marrying her. Or anyway, not much. But you can't expect me to like McGhee. My heavens, if I'd never seen the man before I'd hate his little purple guts on first contact, because he looks like a poet and talks like a scientist and acts like a jerk.
I started back to the living room and yelled: "The baby!"
Margery turned away from simpering at her former husband and sprang for the puppy's dish. She got it away from the baby, but not quite full. There was a good baby-sized mouthful of mixed milk and dog-biscuit that she had to excavate for, and naturally the baby had his way of counter-attacking for that.
"No bite!" she yelled, pulling her finger out of his mouth and putting it in hers. Then she smiled sweetly. "Isn't he a darling, Winnie? He's got his daddy's nose, of course. But don't you think he has my eyes?"
"He'll have your fingers too, if you don't keep them out of his mouth," I told her.
Winnie said: "That's normal. After all, with twenty-four paired chromosomes forming the gamete, it is perfectly obvious that the probability of inheriting none of his traits from one parent-that is, being exactly like the other-is one chance in 8,388,608. Ooh, my head."
Margery gave him a small frown. "What?"
He was like a wound-up phonograph. "That's without allowance for spontaneous mutation," he added. "Or induced. And considering the environmental factors in utero-that is, broad-spectrum antibiotics, tripling of the background radiation count due to nuclear weapons, dietary influences, et cetera-yes, I should put the probability of induced mutation rather high. Yes. Perhaps of the order of-"
I interrupted. "Here's your aspirin. Now, what do you want?"
"Harlan!" Margery said warningly.
"I mean-well, what do you want?"
He leaned his head on his hands. "I want you to help me conquer the world," he said.
Crash-splash. "Go get a mop!" Margery ordered; the baby had just spilled the puppy's water. She glared at me and smiled at Winnie. "Go ahead," she coaxed. "Take your nice aspirin, and we'll talk about your trip around the world later."

But that hadn't been what he had said.
Conquer the world. I heard it plain as day. I went to fetch the mop, because that was as good a way as any to think over what to do about Winston McNeely McGhee. I mean, what did I want with the world? Uncle Otto had already bequeathed me the world, or anyway as much of it as I ever hoped to own.
When I came back Winnie was tottering around the room, followed at a respectful distance by my wife holding the baby. She was saying to the prospective conqueror of all the world:
"How did you hear about Harlan's good lu- About the tragic loss of his dear uncle, I mean?"
He groaned, "I read it in the paper." He fiddled aimlessly with the phone.
"It's all for the best, I say," said Margery in a philosophic tone, carving damp graham-cracker crumbs out of the baby's ear. "Dear Otto lived a rich and full life. Think of all those years in Yemen! And the enormous satisfaction it must have given him to be personally responsible for the installation of the largest petroleum-cracking still west of the Suez!"
"East, my dear. East. The Mutawakelite Kingdom lies just south of Saudi Arabia."
She looked at him thoughtfully, but all she said was, "Winnie, you've changed."
And so he had; but for that matter so had she. It was not like Margery to be a hypocrite. Simpering over her ex-husband I could understand-it wasn't so bad; she was merely showing the poor guy how very much better off she was than she ever would have been with him. But the tragic loss of my dear uncle had never occasioned a moment's regret in her-or in me; the plain fact of the matter is that until the man from the Associated Press called up she didn't even know I had an Uncle Otto. And I had pretty nearly forgotten it myself. Otto was the brother that my mother's family didn't talk about. How were they to know that he was laying up treasures of oil and gold on the Arabian Peninsula?