"William Tenn - Lisbon Cubed" - читать интересную книгу автора (William Tenn)

He'd established rendezvous!
"So that's how much you like me?" he queried, fighting for time, trying to think out his next step.
"Oh, yes!" she assured him. "I'm carrying the torch, all right. I idolize you. I fancy you. I dote on you. I hold dear, make much of, cherish, prize, cling toЧ"
"Good!" he almost yelled in the desperation of his attempt to break in on the lanнguage of love. "Good, good, good, good! Now, I'd like to go some place where we can have some privacy and discuss your feelings in more detail." He worked his face for a moment or two, composing it into an enormous leer. "My hotel room, say, or your apartment?"
Mme. Du Barry nodded enthusiastically. "My apartment. It's closest."
As she tripped out of the bar beside him, Alfred had to keep reminding himself that this was no human wench, despite the tremulous pressure of her arm around his or the wriggling caress of her hip. This was an intelligent spider operating machinery, no more, no less. But it was also his first key to the puzzle of what the aliens wanted of Earth, his entry into the larger spy organizationЧand, if he kept his head and enнjoyed just a bit of luck, it might well be the means to the saving of his world.
A cab rolled up. They got in, and she called out an address to the driver. Then she turned to Alfred.
"Now let's kiss passionately," she said.
They kissed passionately.
"Now let's snuggle," she said.
They snuggled.
"Now let's snuggle a lot harder," she said.
They snuggled a lot harder.
"That's enough," she said. "For now."
They stopped in front of a large old apartment house that dozed fitfully high above the street, dreaming of its past as it stared down at a flock of run-down brownstones.
Alfred paid the driver and accompanied Mme. Du Barry to the entrance. As he held the elevator door open for her, she batted her eyes at him excitedly and breathed fast in his ear a couple of times.
In the elevator, she pressed the button marked "B."
"Why the basement?" he asked. "Is your apartment in the basement?"
For answer, she pointed a tiny red cylinder at his stomach. He noticed there was a minute button on top of the cylinder. Her thumb was poised over the button.
"Never you mind what's in the basement, you lousy Vaklittian sneak. You just stand very still and do exactly what I tell you. And for your information, I know where you are and where your control cubicle is, so don't entertain any hopes of getting away with nothing more than a damaged uniform."
Alfred glanced down at the region covered by her weapon and swallowed hard. She was wrong about the location of his control cubicle, of course, but still, face it, how much living would he be able to do without a belly?
"Don't worry," he begged her. "I won't do anything foolish."
"You'd better not. And no phmpffs out of you either, if you know what's good for you. One solitary phmpff and I fill you full of holes. I ventilate you, mister, I plug you where you stand. I let daylight through you. I spray yourЧ"
"I get the idea," Alfred broke in, "No phmpffs. Absolutely. I give you my word of honor."
"Your word of honor!" she sneered. The elevator stopped and she backed out, gesнturing him to follow. He stared at her masked face and resplendent costume, rememнbering that when Du Barry had been dragged to the guillotine in 1793, she had screamed to the crowds about her tumbril: "Mercy! Mercy for repentance!" He was glad to recall that neither the crowds nor the Revolutionary Tribunal had taken her up on the honest offer.
Not exactly to Alfred's surprise, there was a man waiting for them in the clammy, whitewashed basement. The Huguenot. He of the American thinking straight-to-the-point.
"Any trouble?"
"No, it was easy," she told him. "I pulled him in with the Cleveland-contest-three-years-ago routine. He was smooth about it, I'll say that for him: pretended not to be interested, you know, but he must have bitten hard. I found that out a few seconds later when I told him I loved him and he asked me right off to come up to his apartнment." She chuckled. "The poor, pathetic incompetent! As if any normal American human male would react like thatЧwithout so much as a remark about my beautiнful eyes and how cute I am and how different I am and how about another drink, baby."
The Huguenot pulled at his lip dubiously. "And yet the uniform-disguise is a fine one," he pointed out. "That shows a high degree of competence."
"So what?" the woman shrugged. "He can design a good uniform, he can think up a splendid disguise, but what good is that if he's slip-shod about his performance? This one's barely learned anything about human methods and human manners. Even if I hadn't known about him before, I'd have spotted him on the basis of his love-makнing in the cab."
"Bad, eh?"
"Bad!" She rolled her eyes for maximum emphasis, "Oh, brother! I pity him if he ever pulled that clumsy counterfeit on a real human female. Bad isn't the word. A cheap fake. A second-rate ad-lib, but from hunger. No conviction, no feeling of realнity, nothing!"
Alfred glared at her through the wide-open wounds of his ego. There were holes in her performance, he thought savagely, that would have closed any show the first night. But he decided against giving this critical appraisal aloud. After all, she had the weaponЧand he had no idea how ugly a mess that little red cylinder might make.
"All right," said the Huguenot, "let's put him in with the other one."
As the red cylinder prodded into his backbone, Alfred marched up the main baseнment corridor, turned right at their command, turned right again, and halted before a blank wall. The Huguenot came up beside him and rubbed his hand across the surface several times. A part of the wall swung open as if on hinges, and they stepped inside.
Secret panels, yet! Alfred was thinking morosely. Secret panels, a female siren, a Huguenot master-mindЧall the equipment. The only thing that was missing was a reason for the whole damn business. His captors evidently had not discovered that he was a human counterspy, or they would have destroyed him out of hand. They thought he was aЧwhat was it?Чa Vaklittian. A Vaklittian sneak, no less? So there were two sets of spiesЧthe Huguenot had said something about putting him in with the other one. But what were these two sets of spies after? Were they both grappling for preinvasion control of Earth? That would make his mission much more compliнcated. To say nothing about trying to tell the police, if he ever managed to get to the police, about two interplanetary invasions!
And look who'd thought he was the counterspy in the picture...
The room was large and windowless. It was almost empty. In one corner, there was a transparent cube about eight feet on each side. A middle-aged man in a single-breasted brown business suit sat on the floor of the cube watching them curiously and a little hopelessly.
The Huguenot paused as he reached the cube. "You've searched him, of course?"
Mme. Du Barry got flustered. "WellЧno, not exactly. I intended toЧbut you were waiting when we got out of the elevatorЧI hadn't expected you for a while yet, you knowЧand then we got into conversationЧand I just didn'tЧ"
Her superior shook his head angrily. "And you talk about competence! Oh, well, if I have to do everything, I guess I just have to do everything!"
He ran his hands over Alfred. He took out Alfred's fountain pen and his cigarette lighter and examined them very closely. Then he replaced them and looked puzzled. "He's not carrying a weapon. Does that make sense?"
"I think so. He's not experienced enough to be trusted with anything dangerous."
The Huguenot thought about it for a while. "No. He wouldn't be running around by himself, then. He'd be under supervision."
"Maybe he is. Maybe that's the answer. In that caseЧ"
"In that case, you both might have been followed here. Yes, that could be it. Well, we'll fool them. Contact or no contact, we'll close the operation here as of tonight. Don't go out againЧin an hour or so, we'll leave the planet and take off with our prisoners for headquarters." He rubbed his hands against the cube as he had on the wall outside. An opening appeared in the transparency and widened rapidly. With the cylinder at his back, Alfred was pushed inside.
"Give him a small blast," he heard the Huguenot whisper. "Not too muchЧI don't want him killed before he's questioned. Just enough to stun him and keep him from talking to the other one."
There was a tiny click behind him. A rosy glow lit up the cube and the basement room. Alfred felt a bubble of gas form in his belly and rise upward slowly. After a while, he belched.
When he turned around, the opening in the transparency had closed and the Huguenot had whirled angrily on Mme. Du Barry. The lady was examining her weapon with great puzzlement.
"I told you I wanted him stunned, not tickled! Is there anything I can depend on you to do right?"