"William Tenn - Firewater" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

Firewater
William Tenn


The hairiest, dirtiest and oldest of the three visitors from Arizona scratched his back against the plastic
of the webfoam chair. "Insinuations are lavender nearly," he re-marked by way of opening the
conversation.
His two companionsтАФthe thin young man with dripping eyes, and the woman whose good looks
were marred chiefly by incredibly decayed teethтАФgiggled and re-laxed. The thin young man said
"Gabble, gabble, honk!" under his breath, and the other two nodded emphatically.
Greta Seidenheim looked up from the tiny stenographic machine resting on a pair of the most
exciting knees her employer had been able to find in Greater New York. She swiveled her blonde beauty
at him. "That too, Mr. Hebster?"
The president of Hebster Securities, Inc., waited until the memory of her voice ceased to tickle his
ears; he had much clear thinking to do. Then he nodded and said resonantly, "That too, Miss Seidenheim.
Close phonetic approximations of the gabble-honk and remember to indicate when it sounds like a
question and when like an exclamation."
He rubbed his recently manicured fingernails across the desk drawer containing his fully loaded
Parabellum. Check. The communication buttons with which he could summon any quantity of Hebster
Securities personnel up to the nine hun-dred working at present in the Hebster Building lay some eight
inches from the other hand. Check. And there were the doors here, the doors there, behind which his
uni-formed bodyguard stood poised to burst in at a signal which would blaze before them the moment his
right foot came off the tiny spring set in the floor. And check.
Algernon Hebster could talk businessтАФeven with Primeys.
Courteously, he nodded at each one of his visitors from Arizona; he smiled rue-fully at what the dirty
shapeless masses they wore on their feet were doing to the al-most calf-deep rug that had been woven
specially for his private office. He had greeted them when Miss Seidenheim had escorted them in. They
had laughed in his face.
"Suppose we rattle off some introductions. You know me. I'm Hebster, Algernon HebsterтАФyou
asked for me specifically at the desk in the lobby. If it's important to the conversation, my secretary's
name is Greta Seidenheim. And you, sir?"
He had addressed the old fellow, but the thin young man leaned forward in his seat and held out a
taut, almost transparent hand. "Names?" he inquired. "Names are round if not revealed. Consider names.
How many names? Consider names, recon-sider names!"
The woman leaned forward too, and the smell from her diseased mouth reached Hebster even
across the enormous space of his office. "Rabble and reaching and all the upward clash," she intoned,
spreading her hands as if in agreement with an obvi-ous point. "Emptiness derogating itself into infinityтАФ"
"Into duration," the older man corrected.
"Into infinity," the woman insisted.
"Gabble, gabble, honk?" the young man queried bitterly.
"Listen!" Hebster roared. "When I asked forтАФ"


The communicator buzzed and he drew a deep breath and pressed a button. His receptionist's voice
boiled out rapidly, fearfully:
 "I remember your orders, Mr. Hebster, but those two men from the UM Special Investigating
Commission are here again and they look as if they mean business. I mean they look as if they'll make
trouble."
"Yost and Funatti?"
"Yes, sir. From what they said to each other, I think they know you have three Primeys in there.