"William Tenn - Time in Advance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tenn William)

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. They asked me what are you trying to doтАФdeliberately inflame the
Firsters? They said they're going to invoke full supranational powers and force an
entry if you don'tтАФ"