"Smith, E E 'Doc' - SubSpace Vol 2 - Subspace Encounter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith E. E. Doc)

"That long?" He was amazed. "I'll say it won't! You'll never know how much I appreciate
this, Stare" He slid a yellowish green slip-the Games check for twenty-five thousand
junex-across the desk's top toward her. "This'll be enough, won't it, to pay the costs of a
quarter-hour audience with His Magnificence'? The investigation, security checks, and so
on."

She glanced at the figure, whistled sharply, and pushed the slip back toward him. "No,
my dear;" she said. "We'll forget the polite fiction about `costs,' please-I'm not down to
where you have to bribe me. Or can. Put it back in your wallet."

"Nix. No deal. Partners help each other, don't they? Didn't this job cost you? And plenty."

"Of course it did. Two hundred fifteen thousand junex. But I gathered a lot more posies
on my way up here than I put out." "But not that many." He shook his head. "You aren't
old enough yet. Even though that desk is a flower-garden de luxe, you're still in hock up
to your beautiful ears. Confess."

"All right. I still owe the bank seventy-five thousand; but they aren't worrying about it and
neither am I. Not many bouquets are this big . . ."-she tapped the check lightly"but they
come often. I'll make out. And I won't take this check or any part of it. That's flat and
final."

"You just think it is, little chum," he said firmly. "This isn't bribery anymore, it's a
partnership deal; your authority and my money. Either I at least chip in or I pick up my
marbles and go home and start all over on Spath-and that's flat and final. So call your
shot, Starr".

She studied his face for a long moment, then smiled radiantly-a smile that made her look
to be about eighteen and said, "You really mean that, don't you? I'm amazed. . . . I never
knew a man before who . . . Very well, I'll meet you halfway; we'll go halvers on it." She
put the check into his hand and this time he accepted it. "So bring me one half that big
sometime, you wonderful guy, and I'll accept it with glee. Maybe more than that,
even-woops! More than glee, I mean; not more than half. Not a kinto more than half! But
to get back to this grant business.

"You're petitioning for the reissuance of the research charter your father had, that lapsed
when he died. Your proposed charter is identical with his, except for your name instead
of his, and is the most masterly piece of legal befuddlement I ever scanned. What isn't
sheer gobbledegook is equally sheer flapdoodle. Under that charter you don't have to do
anything whatever and you can do anything you please. Including psionics!" She spat that
word out as though it offended her every sense, then went on.

"I fine-toothed the records, and your father and his group apparently never did anything
except meet a couple of times or so a week and turn in reel after reel of metaphysical
blatherings and blah. And, if I'm any judge, if they found out anything it would have made
eaglemeat out of every one of them right then. So before I sign, seal, and deliver this,
and authorize headquarters and an operating fund, I'll have to."

"Huh?" he broke in, staring. "You sign-and authorize? You mean I don't have to petition