"021 - Dick, Philip K - Counter Clock World v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

He shrugged. "DNT is a potent drug." Maybe it was so. In any case it didn't matter; not to him, anyhow. "Another unexpected rebirth," he said to his wife. "At Forest Knolls, naturally. They're never watching those minor cemeteries; they know we'll handle it--with city equipment." Anyhow, Tilly M. Benton was safely at the L.A. receiving hospital, thanks to Seb Hermes. Within a week she would be disgorging like the rest of them.
"Eerie," Bethel said, still at the doorway to the kitchen.
"How do you know? You never saw it happen."
"You and your damn job," Bethel said. "Don't take it out on me, just because you can't stand it. If it's so awful, quit. Fish or cut bait, as the Romans said."
"I can handle the job; matter of fact, I've already put in for a reassignment." What's hard, he thought, is you. "Let me disgorge in private, will you?" he said angrily. "Go off; read the 'pape."
"Will you be affected?" Bethel asked. "By Ray Roberts coming here to the Coast?"
"Probably not," he said. He did, after all, have a regular beat. Nothing ever seemed to change _that_.
"They won't have you out with your popgun protecting him?"
"Protecting him?" he said. "I'd shoot him."
"Oh dear," Bethel said mockingly. "Such ambition. And then you could go down in history."
"I'll go down in history anyhow," Tinbane said.
"What for? What have you done? And what in the future do you intend to do? Keep on digging up old ladies out at Forest Knolls Cemetery?" Her tone lacerated him. "Or for being married to me?"
"That's right; for being married to you." His tone was equally scathing; he had learned it from her, over the long, dead months of their alleged marriage.
Bethel returned, then, to the living room. Left alone, he continued to disgorge, now left in peace. He appreciated it.
Anyhow, he thought gloomily, Tilly M. Benton of South Pasadena likes me.









3


Eternity is a kind of measure. But to be measured belongs not to God. Therefore it does not belong to Him to be eternal.
--St. Thomas Aquinas



It had always been difficult for Officer Joe Tinbane to determine precisely what official rank George Gore held in the Los Angeles Police Department; he wore an ordinary citizen's cape, natty turned-up Italian shoes and a bright, fashionable shirt which looked even a bit gaudy. Gore was a relatively slender man, tall, in his mid-forties, Tinbane guessed. He came directly to the point, as the two of them sat facing each other in Gore's office.
"Since Ray Roberts is arriving in town, we've been asked by the Governor to provide a personal bodyguard . . . which we planned to do anyway. Four or possibly five men; we're in agreement on that, too. You asked to be reassigned, so you're one." Gore shuffled some documents on his desk; Tinbane saw that they pertained to him. "Okay?" Gore said.
"If you say so," Tinbane said, feeling sullen--and surprised. "You don't mean for crowd control; you mean all the time. Around the clock." In proximity, he realized. By personal they meant personal.
Gore said, "You'll eat with him--excuse the expression; sorry--and sleep with him in the same room; all that. He has no bodyguard, normally. But we have a lot of people out here holding deep grudges toward the Uditi. Not that they don't in the F.N.M., but that's not our problem." He added, "Roberts hasn't asked for this, but we're not about to consult him. Whether he likes it or not he's going to get twenty-four hour protection while he's in our jurisdiction." Gore's tone was bureaucratic and stony.
"I gather we won't be relieved."
"You'll stagger your wake-sleep cycle, the four of you. But no; except for that you'll be with him all the time. It's only for forty-eight or seventy-two hours; whichever he chooses. He hasn't decided. But you probably know that; you read the 'papes."
Tinbane said, "I don't like him."
"Too bad for you. But that's not going to affect Roberts much; I doubt if he cares. He's got plenty of followers out here, and he'll get the curiosity crowd. He can survive your opinion. Anyhow, what do you know about him? You've never met him."
"My wife likes him."
Gore grinned. "Well, he can probably endure that, too. I get your point, though. It is a fact that a major part of his following are women. That seems to be generally the case. I have our file on Ray Roberts; I think you should read it over before he shows up. You can do it on your own time. You'll be interested; there're some strange things in there, things he's said and done, what Udi believes. We're allowing that communal drug experience, you know, even though it's technically illegal. That's what it is: a drug orgy; the religious aspect is just fabrication, just window-dressing. He's a weird and violent man--at least so we view him. I guess his followers don't find him so. Or maybe they do and they like it." Gore tapped a locked green metal box at the far edge of his desk. "You'll see when you've read this--all the crimes he's sanctioned for those gunsels of his, those Offspring of Might, to do." He pushed the box toward Tinbane. "And after this, I want you to go to the People's Topical Library, Section A or B. For more."
Accepting the locked file, Tinbane said, "Give me the key and I'll read this--on my own time."
Gore produced the key. "One thing, Officer. Don't fall for the 'pape stereotype view of Ray Roberts. A lot's been said about him, but most of it is fictitious, and what actually is true hasn't been said . . . but it's in there, and when you've read it you'll understand what I'm referring to. In particular I mean the violence." He leaned toward Joe Tinbane. "Look; I'll give you a choice. Alter you've read the material on Roberts, come back and see me; give me your decision then. Frankly I think you'll take the job; it's officially a promotion, a step up in your career."
Standing, Tinbane picked up the key and the locked box. I don't agree, he thought to himself. But he said, "Okay, Mr. Gore. I have how long?"
"Call me by five," Gore said. And continued to grin his acid, knowing grin.
In Section B of the People's Topical Library, Officer Joe Tinbane warily stood at the chief librarian's desk; something about the Librai y intimidated him--and he did not know what it was or why.
Several persons were ahead of him; he waited restlessly, glancing about and wondering as always about his marriage with Bethel and about his career with the police department, and then about the purpose of life and the meaning--if any--of it, what the old-borns experienced while they lay in the ground, and what it would be like, someday, to dwindle away as he eventually would, and enter a nearby womb.
As he stood there a familiar person came up beside him; small, in a long cloth coat, with her dark, extensive brown hair tumbling: a pretty, but married girl, Lotta Hermes.
"'Bye," he said, pleased to run into her.