"John Dalmas - The Puppet Master" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

These stories are set in a time line that branched from yours and mine sometime after the close of World War
Two. Much in it remains familiar; some things are very similar. But major differences have developed. The geo-
gravitic power converter has energized economies while greatly easing energy, water, and pollution problems.
But the blessing is mixed. The GPC has brought more than cheap, clean, abundant energy and the new
physics: The resulting flood of scientific and technological innovations is accelerating changes in society, with
outgrowths positive and negative, attractive and ugly, exciting and fearsome.
Homo sapiens has major adjustments to make.
A MOST SINGULAR MURDER
—
a novella
 1

My name is Martti Seppanen, and I work for Prudential Investigations and Security, Inc. Things had been slow,
and I’d had nothing much to do for a day and a half—since I’d finished rounding up the collusion evidence
against Funsch, Carillo, and Wallace. So I stood there in my two-by-four office—ten by ten feet, actually—
looking westward across the L.A. basin toward the higher rises of Lower Wilshire. While drilling Spanish.
I don’t mind days like that. But there was the nagging worry that if business didn’t pick up, Joe might have to
lay people off. Me for example. Times like that you can wonder whether it had been a good idea when Joe leased
the whole ninth floor of this high-rent high rise. Of course, the old building got sold out from under him and
knocked down. The old buildings are disappearing.
Besides, when I don’t have a case, I get the munchies worse than usual, and I gain weight too easily.
I kept drilling, using a question and answer program on intermediate spoken Spanish. The computer would
voice a question in fairly simple Spanish, and I’d answer it. Or it would tell me to discuss some simple thing.
Then it would critique my diction, grammar, and pronunciation, and we’d repeat it till the program was satisfied
with my performance.
¿«Donde guardan los documentos financiales»? the computer asked me. (“Where do you keep your financial
records?”) The program is part of the department’s advanced language training.
«Debajo de la bañadera, I answered, donde nadie los buscaria». (“Under the bathtub, where no one would
ever look for them.”) You do enough of those drills, you learn what the program will accept.
That’s where things stood when Carlos looked in on me. “Come in my office,” he said. “We’ve got something
for you.”
“We” meant himself and Joe Keneely. Joe’s the founder, principal shareholder, and CEO of Prudential. Carlos
is the senior investigator, and I was his protégé, top of the list of junior investigators. And the something would
be an assignment.
I followed Carlos down the hall. His office was big enough for a small conference without people sitting in
each other’s laps. He sat down behind his desk, and I took the chair across from him. Fingering his computer, he
turned on the wall screen. A picture formed and stopped. It showed Joe Keneely’s office, with Joe and Carlos,
and some guy I’d never seen before.
“The client is Donald C. Pasco,” Carlos said. “All the way down from Sacramento. Joe just signed a contract
with him.” He said it as if it tasted bad. I’d heard of Pasco. He was director of the Anti-Fraud Division of the
California Department of Commerce, and had a reputation as an aye-aitch.
The picture came to life, and I watched their conference. Actually I watched Pasco bitch and snarl. About
three weeks earlier, an astronomer named Arthur Ashkenazi had read a paper to the California Section of the
Astronomical Society of America, at the section’s annual meeting. The paper was what had gotten Pasco upset.
Pasco didn’t have much presence, but he had rank and venom. After playing back the meeting with Pasco, Carlos
ran Ashkenazi’s talk for me. I’d been aware of it before, just barely. It had been written up in the papers, but I
hadn’t read it. I read fast, but the L.A. Times is thick, and the talk hadn’t had any significance for me.
Now, watching him deliver it, it turned out to be pretty interesting. It didn’t offend me at all, but it had
offended Ashkenazi’s audience. He’d hardly gotten well underway when people started to leave. “Stalked out” is