"Spider Robinson - The Magnificent Conspiracy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

The janitor habit was hard to break, too. Over the next ten years I toured my
empire, like a king traveling incognito to learn the flavor of his land. I held many and
varied jobs, for my empire is an octopus, but they all amounted to janitor. I spent ten
years toiling anonymously at the very borders of my fortune, at the last interface
between it and the people it involved, the com-munities it affected. And without me
at the helm, for ten years, the nature and operation of my fortune changed in no way
whatsoever, and when I realized that, it shook me. I gave up my tour of inspection
and went to my estate in British Columbia and holed up for a few years, thinking it
through. Then I began effecting changes. This used-car lot is only one of them. It's
my favorite, though, so it's the first one I've imple-mented and it's where I choose to
spend my personal working hours.
But there are many other changes planned.

III

The silence stretched like a spring, but when at last I spoke my voice was soft,
quiet, casual, quite calm. "And you expect me to believe that none of these changes
will make a profit?" He blinked and started, precisely as if a tape recorder had
started talking back to him.
"My dear Mr. Campbell," he said with a trace of sadness, "I frankly don't expect
you to believe a word I've said."
My voice was still calm. "Then why tell me all this?"
"I'm not at all sure. But I believe it has much to do with the fact that you are the
first person to ask me about it since I opened this shop."
Calm gone. "Bullshit," I roared, much too loud. "Bullfuckingshit, I mean a
king-size mea-dow muffin! Do you goddammit," I was nearly incoherent, "think I
was fucking born yesterday? Sell me a free lunch? You simple sonofabitch I am not
that stupid/"
This silence did not stretch; it lay there like a bludgeoned dove. I wondered
whether all garages echoed like this and I'd never noticed. The hell with control, I
don't need control, control is garbage, it's just me and him. My spine was very
straight.
"I'm sorry," he said at last, as sorrowfully as though my anger were truly his fault.
"I hum-bly apologze, Mr. Campbell. I took you for a different kind of man. But I
can see now that you're no fool."
His voice was infinitely sad.
"I don't mind a con, but this is stupid. You're giving away cars and you and
Larsen are plenty to handle the traffic. I'm your only customerтАФwhat do you take
me for?"
"The first wave has passed," he said. "There are only so many fools in any
community, only a few naive or desperate enough to turn out for a free lunch. It was
quite busy here for six months or so, but now all the fools have been
accommodated. It will be weeks, months, before word-of-mouth gets around,
before people learn that the cars I've sold them are good cars, that my guarantees are
genuine. Dozens will have to return, scream for service, promptly receive it and
numbly wander home before the news begins to spread. It will get quite busy again
then, for a while, and probably very noisy, tooтАФbut at the moment I'm not even a
Silly Season filler in the local paper. The editor killed it, as any good editor would.
He's no fool, either.
"I'm recruiting fools, Mr. Campbell. There was bound to be a lull after the first