"Callahan 09 - Callahan's Key 1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

"Jesus Christ, Duck, knock it off! What the hell are you doing back?"
"Nap later," the Lucky Duck said. "You're working."
Ernie Shea is known to one and all as the Lucky Duck because around him the laws of probability turn to Silly Putty-which combined with his short stature explains and may even excuse an irascible sourpuss personality reminiscent of Daffy Duck. He is a mutant, the bastard offspring of a pookah and a Fir Darrig, two creatures commonly thought to be mythical (everywhere except Ireland), and strange things always happen around him. It's sort of a paranormal power.
I was too groggy to think through the implications of his presence.
"The hell I am," I snarled. "I haven't worked in over a year. The goddam bar is as dead as Nutsy's Kells . . . and the Folk Music Revival developed ice crystals in the brain from the defrosting process, they had to put it back to sleep again. There is no work, you dumb pookah!"
"You're working," he repeated. "Nikky's here. Come on."
"Huh?"
I levitated, then looked down and stuck my feet firmly to the floor. This was too weird not to be true. At my gesture, the Lucky Duck went back inside, and I followed him. And there, standing at my bar, impeccably dressed as always and wiping drool from the chin of my baby daughter Erin, was indeed and in fact Nikola Tesla.


Perhaps the name rings a bell? Forgotten Father of the Twentieth Century? Father of alternating current. . . the condenser . . . the transformer . . . the Tesla Coil...the very induction motor itself...the remote control... radio . . . the crucial "AND-gate" logic circuit. . . and all the essential components of the transistor? (Tesla held patents on all of these. . . and literally a hundred more.) Friend of Mark Twain and Paderewski, sworn enemy of the evil Edison and treacherous Marconi? Perhaps the single most outrageously shafted and dishonored man in the history of the human race, screwed out of more credit and money than anyone since the guy who invented sex? That Nikola Tesla? Okay, perhaps it seems a little odd that he was going bar-hopping in the snow at age 133. Especially since he'd died forty-six years earlier, in 1943. But Nikky has more fiber than I do, I guess: he doesn't let a little thing like death slow him down. "Hi, Nikky," I called out. "What's up?"
"Jake!" he cried, in that memorable baritone. "Excuse me, Erin."
"Sure, Uncle Nikky," my fourteen-month-old said, releasing his fingers.
"Thank heaven you are here," Tesla said to me, wiping his fingers off on Erin's barf-scarf and handing her to the Lucky Duck . . . who reluctantly accepted her and held her at arm's length. "There is little time to lose."
I sighed. Somehow I knew what he was about to say. It had been that kind of a day. "Go ahead. Tell me about it."
He took a deep breath himself, and those incredible eyebrows of his drew together. "Jake, Michael and I need you to save the universe."
I slammed my hat to the barroom floor. "God damn it. AGAIN?"


"Jake-" Zoey began, coming out of our living quarters in the back.
"No, I mean it, Zoey. I'm sorry, Nikky, but this is starting to piss me off."
He nodded gravely. "It is exceedingly aggravating."
"Jake, it's not-"
"Zoey, when the hell did I ever sign any recruitment papers? I would have been a conscientious objector for Nam, if I hadn't already been 4-F."
"Jake, it's not as if-"
"Enough is enough, you know? You can go to the well once too often."
"Jake, it's not as if you had-"
"Do I have any training for this shit? Do I have my own tools? All I ever volunteered for in my life was going up on stage to make music, and running a bar, and helping you and Erin conquer the planet, and I've blown two out of three so far."
"Jake, it's not as if you had anything better-"
"No, I'm serious: twice is as much as any man ought to be asked to serve his . . . I'm sorry, love, what did you say?"
"It's not as if you had anything better to. . . oh, never mind, I won't say it."
Well, if she'd decided not to say it, then it was probably something that would have stung like hell to hear, so I stopped trying to guess what it might have been. Besides, by then she was taking my clothes off, which is likely to distract me no matter how busy we are.
"Jesus Christ, Jake," the Lucky Duck snickered, "even considering it's cold outside-"
"Duck," Zoey said, toweling me briskly with a huge bath towel, "would you like me to sit on you while Jake makes a snowman out of yours so you can compare?"
He shriveled. Making two of us.
"Out of his what, Mommy?" Erin asked. Zoey ignored her and kept drying me; I endured it with what dignity I could muster.
"Nikky," I said, "I appreciate the confidence you and Mike are placing in me-I'm really flattered, okay?- but-"
"Are they talking about Daddy's penis? That's silly. It gets much bigger than that, I've seen it-"
"-thank you, Erin, but excuse me, okay? Daddy has to tell Uncle Nikky he isn't going to save the universe this time: after that we can discuss my penis." Zoey pulled sweatpants up me to help change the subject. "Nikola, I would like to help you...but you have got the wrong man."
He looked somber. "There is no other, Jacob."
I went into my Lord Buckley imitation. "'What's the matter, Mr. Whale? Ain't you hip to what's goin' down in these here parts? Don't you read the Marine News?" He didn't recognize the quote, and I didn't have the heart to sustain it anyway. "Nikky, let me explain it in words of one syllable," I said in my normal voice. "It's all over. The Place is dead. I got no crew."
"They yet live."
"Sure. Scattered all to hell and gone. Shorty and his wives are out west, Doc's retired to Florida, Isham and Tanya went up to Nova Scotia, the rest are scattered all over the Island. I see Long-Drink once a month if I'm lucky, and he's the one I still see the most. Christ knows what the hell ever happened to Fast Eddie. Like John Lennon said, the dream is over."
Zoey had finished dressing me (fuzzy slippers, sweatshirt, bathrobe), and picked that moment to yank the bathrobe belt tight around my middle, hard enough that I made a little peep sound. "There," she said contentedly. "Erin, Bless your father."
The Duck had set Erin down on the bar; in a shot she crawled down to the far end, down onto the counter and over to The Machine, studied the combination, and pushed the go button. The conveyor belt hummed into life, and dragged an empty mug to its fate.
Nikky watched this soberly until he was sure Erin did indeed have sufficient coordination to be safe where she was. (She could walk great, at fourteen months, but was far too smart to attempt it on top of the bar.) Then he turned back to me. "How many could you assemble, if you sounded the tocsin?"
Warm clothes and the prospect of coffee were beginning to mollify me a trifle; my voice came out perhaps two tones lower and ten decibels softer than before. "Aw, hell, Nik. I guess . . . shit, I guess all of 'em. Sooner or later. Everybody that's still alive. If I started working the phones right now, I could probably muster fifteen or twenty by this time tomorrow-all the ones that are still close by. But where?"
"Beg pardon?"
"You can't have a club without a clubhouse. If twenty people all showed up here, tomorrow-even if they showed up on foot, in the dead of night, from different directions-fifteen minutes later the town, county, state, and feds would all come in the door right behind 'em, waving warrants to dry the ink. We tried. Several times. Old Nyjmnckra Grtozkzhnyi over yonder never sleeps. That's why everybody's scattered. There's no place to meet.
"For a while a few of us tried taking over some existing bar and turning it into our place-and it was a disaster. We even tried declaring ourselves a religious group and renting meditation space, but we kept getting caught drinking and tossed out. A couple of folks even tried it without booze or music, but it didn't work: I knew it wouldn't. And I am never going to be allowed to put alcohol and a large group of people in the same room again-not in this state. Probably not anywhere: I'm marked lousy with the feds, too. Some sister-in-law of Inspector Grtozkzhnyi has one of those triple-digit GS numbers, wouldn't you know?" I trailed off, distracted by the scent that promises surcease of pain.