"Theodore Sturgeon - Ether Breather" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sturgeon Theodore)

He said, "You heard what I said about the play."
I didn't wait for the rest of the plug, the station identifica-tion, and act three. I headed for m
visiphone and dialed As-sociated. I was burning up. When their pert-faced switchboard g
flashed on my screen I snapped: "Get me Griff. Snap it up!"
"Mr. Griff's line is busy, Mr. Hamilton," she sang to me. "Will you hold the wire, or shall I c
you back?"
"None of that, Dorothe," I roared. Dorothe and I had gone to high school together; as a matt
of fact I had got her the job with Griff, who was Associated's head script man. "I don't ca
who's talking to Griff. Cut him off and put me through. He can't do that to me. I'll sue, that's wh
I'll do. I'll break the company. I'llтАФ"
"Take it easy, Ted," she said. "What's the matter with ev-eryone all of a sudden, anyway?
you must know, the man gabbing with Griff now is old Berbelot himself. Seems he wants to s
Associated, too. What's up?"
By this time I was practically incoherent. "Berbelot, hey? I'll sue him, too. The rat! T
dirtyтАФWhat are you laughing at?"
"He wants to sue you!" she giggled. "And I'll bet Griff will, too, to shut Berbelot up. Yo
know, this might turn out to be really funny!" Before I could swallow that she switched me over
Griff.
As he answered he was wiping his heavy jowls with a handkerchief. "Well?" he asked in
shaken voice.
"What are you, a wise guy?" I bellowed. "What kind of a stunt is that you pulled on t
commercial plug on my play? Whose idea was that, anyway? Berbelot's? What theтАФ"
"Now, Hamilton." Griff said easily, "don't excite yourself this way." I could see his han
tremblingтАФevidently old Berbelot had laid it on thick. "Nothing untoward has occurred. You mu
be mistaken. I assure youтАФ"
"You pompous old sociophagus," I growled, wasting a swell two-dollar word on him, "don
call me a liar. I've been listening to that program and I know what I heard. I'm going to sue yo
And Berbelot. And if you try to pass the buck onto the actors in that plug skit, I'll sue them, to
And if you make any more cracks about me being mistaken, I'm go-ing to come up there and fe
you your teeth. Then I'll sue you personally as well as Associated."
I dialed out and went back to my television set, fuming. The program was going on as
nothing had happened. As I cooledтАФand I cool slowlyтАФI began to see that the last half of "T
Seashell" was even better than the first. You know, it's poison for a writer to fall in love with h
own stuff; but, by golly, sometimes you turn out a piece that really has something. You try to
critical, and you can't be. The Ponta Delgada sequence in "The Seashell" was like that.
The girl was on a cruise and the boy was on a training ship. They met in the Azores Island
Very touching. The last time they saw each other was before they were in their teens, but in t
meantime they had had their dreams. Get the idea of the thing? Very pastel. And they did do
nicely. The shots of Ponta Delgada and the scenery of the Azores were swell. Came the momen
after four minutes of ickey dia-logue. when he gazed at her, the light of true, mature love dawnin
on his young face.
She said shyly, "WellтАФ"
 Now, his lines, as writtenтАФand I should know!тАФwent:
"Rosalind . . . it is you, then, isn't it? Oh, I'm afraid"тАФhe grasps her shouldersтАФ"afraid that
can't be real. So many times I've seen someone who might be you, and it has never been .
Rosalind. Rosalind, guardian angel, reason for liv-ing. beloved . . . belovedтАФ" Clinch.
Now, as I say, it went off as written, up to and including the clinch. But then came the payo
He took his lips from hers, buried his face in her hair and said `clearly: "I hate your guts." An
that " " was the most perfectly enunciated present participle of a four-letter verb I have ev
heard.