"Tom Purdom-Toys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

Toys
by Tom Purdom
This story copyright 1967 by Tom Purdom. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal use. All
other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


A picture appeared on the fifteen centimeter television screen in the middle of the instrument panel. An
unmanned patrol vehicle had picked up a scene that looked bad and the central computer had brought it
to the attention of the dispatcher. A mob seemed to be gathering around Three Thousand One
Strawberry Row. About fifty people were standing around in little groups in the adjacent yards. In the
yard of the house itself, in front of the main entrance, a boy was sitting on top of a small elephant. Two
dragons were sitting on their haunches with their wings raised and a gorilla and two watchtigers were
pacing on the grass.
A car slid onto the left side of the screen and flew up to the house. It stopped next to a fourth floor
window and a female voice screamed through a loudspeaker. "Get out of that house, Andrew Bruder.
Get out of that house right now. Who do you think you are?"
Round faces looked up through the twilight. A childish voice yelled at the woman through a
loudspeaker inside the house. "Get outta our yard, Mrs. Bruder. Back off or we'll let our hostages sit
here until you're gone. We aren't kidding. This is no game."
The boy mounted on the elephant cupped his hands over his mouth and told the woman to go have a
heart attack. A tiger raised its head and snarled. The elephant trumpeted. The gorilla hopped around on
all fours and beat its chest.
"I had the computer call everybody in a twenty-house radius," the dispatcher said. "The reports are
coming in now. Ten to twelve children have taken the Rice family hostage. They seem to be led by the
Rice's nine year old son, Tim. Their main weapons seem to be their pets, but they may have other
weapons inside the house. They want a committee of three parents to enter the house and negotiate with
them, but they won't say what they want."
***


The police car leveled off two hundred meters above the regular traffic lanes and sped east with its
siren screaming. Inside the cockpit, Charley Edelman's left hand tightened around the neck of an
imaginary cello. He glanced at Helen Fracarro; she shook her head and shrugged. The joyride was over.
One moment you were riding around in the evening talking about children's books with a woman whose
soft, romantic face would have made a Spanish cavalier howl with frustration-- and the next moment you
were listening to a quiet voice tell you the State of New Jersey needed your services once again, and
please get ready to earn your fabulous two hundred thousand a year salary the way you had agreed to
earn it.
"What'll they do if nobody negotiates with them?" Edelman asked the dispatcher.
"They haven't said yet."
Fracarro pressed a button on the instrument panel and flashed the central computer. "This is Team Six.
Transmit all available data on people with the last name Rice who live at Three Thousand One
Strawberry Row, Harriman Township."
A screen lit up on the right-hand side of the instrument panel. Documents sped across Edelman's vision
at sixteen hundred words per minute. The housing development in which the Rice family lived came into
sight. Edelman asked the computer for a plan of the house and a recommendation on which psycho gases