"John Varley - Press Enter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

"You mean there was furniture here before?"
"How would I know?" Then I realized what the misunderstanding was.
"Oh. You thought I'd been here before. The first time I ever set foot in
this room was about an hour ago."
He frowned, and I didn't like that much.
"The medical examiner says the guy had been dead about three hours.
How come you came over when you did, Victor?"
I didn't like him using my first name, but didn't see what I could do
about it. And I knew I had to tell him about the phone call.
He looked dubious. But there was one easy way to check it out, and we
did that. Hal and Osborne and I and several others trooped over to my
house. My phone was ringing as we entered.
Osborne picked it up and listened. He got a very sour expression on his
face. As the night wore on, it just got worse and worse.
We waited ten minutes for the phone to ring again. Osborne spent the
time examining everything in my living room. I was glad when the phone
rang again. They made a recording of the message, and we went back to
Kluge's house.
Osborne went into the back yard to see Kluge's forest of antennas. He
looked impressed.
"Mrs. Madison down the street thinks he was trying to contact
Martians," Hal said, with a laugh. "Me, I just thought he was stealing
HBO." There were three parabolic dishes. There were six tall masts, and
some of those things you see on telephone company buildings for
transmitting microwaves.
Osborne took me to the living room again. He asked me to describe
what I had seen. I didn't know what good that would do, but I tried.
"He was sitting in that chair, which was here in front of this table. I saw
the gun on the floor. His hand was hanging down toward it.''
"You think it was suicide?"
"Yes, I guess I did think that." I waited for him to comment but he
didn't. "Is that what you think?"
He sighed. "There wasn't any note."
"They don't always leave notes," Hal pointed out.
"No, but they do often enough that my nose starts to twitch when they
don't." He shrugged. "It's probably nothing."
"That phone call," I said. "That might be a kind of suicide note."
Osborne nodded. "Was there anything else you noticed?"
I went to the table and looked at the keyboard. It was made by Texas
Instruments, model TI-99/4A. There was a large bloodstain on the right
side of it, where his head had been resting.
"Just that he was sitting in front of this machine." I touched a key, and
the monitor screen behind the keyboard immediately filled with words. I
quickly drew my hand back, then stared at the message there.
PROGRAM NAME: GOODBYE REAL WORLD
DATE: 8/20
CONTENTS: LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT; MISC.
FEATURES
PROGRAMMER: "CHARLES KLUGE"
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