"Norman Spinrad - Triceratops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Spinrad Norman)

around this stupid heap of junk babbling all that garbage and driving me half crazy, and he knew
he wasn't going to buy it all the time! I felt like knocking his low posture teeth down his
unworthy throat. But I thought of all those yen I still had a fighting chance at and made the
proper response: a rueful little smile of sympathy, a shared sigh of wistful regret, a murmured,
"Alas."
"However," Ito added brightly, "the memory of this visit is something I shall treasure
always. I am deeply in your debt for granting me this experience, Mr. Harris. For this alone, the
trip from Kyoto has been made more than worthwhile."
Now that really made my day.

I was in real trouble, I was very close to blowing the biggest deal I've ever had a shot
at. I'd shown Ito the two best items in my territory, and if he didn't find what he wanted in the
Northeast, there were plenty of first-rank pieces still left in the rest of the country-top stuff
like the St. Louis Gateway Arch, the Disneyland Matterhorn, the Salt Lake City Mormon Tabernacle-
and plenty of other brokers to collect that big fat commission.
I figured I had only one more good try before Ito started thinking of looking elsewhere:
the United Nations building complex. The U.N. had fallen into a complicated legal limbo. The
United Nations had retained title to the buildings when they moved their. headquarters out of New
York, but when the U.N. folded, New York State, New York City, and the Federal Government had all
laid claim to them, along with the U.N.'s foreign creditors. The Bureau of National Antiquities
didn't have clear title, but they did administer the estate for the Federal Government. If I could
palm the damned thing off on Ito, the Bureau of National Junk would be only too happy to take his
check and let everyone else try to pry the money out of them. And once he moved it to Kyoto, the
Japanese Government would not be about to let anyone repossess something that one of their
heavyweight citizens had shelled out hard yen for.
So I jumped her at Mach 1.7 to a hover at three hundred feet over the greasy waters of the
East River due east of the U.N. complex at 42nd Street. At this time of day and from this angle,
the U.N. buildings presented what I hoped was a romantic Japanese-style vista. The Secretariat was
a giant glass tombstone dramatically silhouetted by the late afternoon sun as it loomed massively


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before us out of the perpetual gray haze hanging over Manhattan; beside it, the low sweeping curve
of the General Assembly gave the grouping a balanced calligraphic outline. The total effect seemed
similar to that of one of those ancient Japanese Torii gates rising out of the, foggy sunset, only
done on a far grander scale.
The Insurrection had left the U.N. untouched-the rebels had had some crazy attachment for
it-and from the river, you couldn't see much of the grubby open air market that had been allowed
to spring up in the Plaza, or the honky-tonk bars along First Avenue. Fortunately, the Bureau of
National Antiquities made a big point of keeping the buildings themselves in good shape, figuring
that the Federal Government's claim

would be weakened if anyone could yell that the Bureau was letting them fall apart.
I floated her slowly in off the river, keeping at the threehundred-foot level, and started
my pitch. "Before you, Mr. Ito, are the United Nations buildings, melancholy symbol of one of the
noblest dreams of man, now unfortunately empty and abandoned, a monument to the tragedy of the
U.N.'s unfortunate demise."
Flashes of sunlight, reflected off the river, then onto the hundreds of windows that