"Dick, Philip K - We Can Build You - txt" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dick Phillip K)

Mr. Louis Rosen.
My Dear Sir:

I wish to enquire of your condition, with hope that you have
improved somewhat.
Yours Truly,
A. Lincoln

"I'll go out and thank him," I said to Maury.
"Do that," Maury said.


9

As we waited in the cold wind at the concourse entrance for the flight from Seattle to land I said to myself, How'll he differ from the other people?
The Boeing 900 landed; it taxied along the runway. The ramps were run out, the doors opened, stewardesses helped people out, and at the bottom of each ramp airline employees made sure the passengers did not take pratfalls onto the asphalt ground. Meanwhile, luggage-carrying vehicles raced around like large bugs, and off to one side a Standard Stations truck had parked with its red lights on.
Every sort of passenger started appearing, issuing forth from the plane at both doors and swarming rapidly down the ramps. Around us friends and relatives pushed forward and out as far onto the field as was allowed. Beside me Maury stirred restlessly.
"Let's get out there and greet him."
Both he and Pris started going, so I went along with them. We were halted by an airline official in a blue uniform who waved us back. However Maury and Pris ignored him; I did so, too, and we reached the bottom of the first class ramp. There we halted. The passengers, one by one, descended, some of them smiling, the businessmen with no expression on their faces. Some of them looked tired.
"There he is," Maury said.
Down the first class ramp came a slender man in a gray suit, smiling slightly, his topcoat over his arm. As he got nearer to us it seemed to me that his suit fitted more naturally than the other men's. No doubt custom-tailored, probably in England or Hong Kong. And he looked more relaxed. He wore greenish dark glasses, rimless; his hair, as in the photos, was cut extra short, almost a GI sort of crewcut. Behind him came a jolly-looking woman I knew: Colleen Nild, with a clipboard and papers under her arm.
"Three in the party," Pris observed. There was another man, very short, portly, in an ill-fitting brown suit with sleeves and trousers too long, a reddish-faced man with a Doctor Doolittle nose and long thinning lank black hair combed across his domed skull. He wore a stickpin in his tie, and the way he strode after Barrows with his short legs convinced me that here was an attorney; this was the way trial lawyers take off from their seat in court, like the manager of a baseball club striding out onto the field to protest a decision. The gesture of protest, I decided as I watched him, is the same in all professions; you get right out there, talking and waving your arms as you come.
The lawyer was beaming in an alert, active fashion, talking away at a great rate to Colleen Nild; he looked to me to be a likable sort of guy, someone with enormous bouncy energy, just the sort of attorney I would have expected Barrows to have on retainer. Colleen, as before, wore a heavy blue-black quilted cloth coat that hung like lead. This time she was dressed up: she had on gloves, a hat, new leather mailpouch type purse. She was listening to the attorney; as he talked away he gestured in all directions, like an interior decorator or the foreman of a construction crew. Something about him gave me a friendly warm feeling and I felt less tense, now. The lawyer looked, I decided, like a great kidder. I felt I understood him.
Now here came Barrows to the bottom of the ramp, his eyes invisible behind his dark glasses, his head down slightly so as to keep an eye on what his feet were doing. He was listening to the attorney. As he started out onto the field Maury stepped forward.
"Mr. Barrows!"
Turning and halting, moving out of the way so those behind him could step from the ramp, Barrows in one movement of his body lithely swiveled and held out his hand. "Mr. Rock?"
"Yes sir," Maury said, shaking hands. Colleen Nild and the attorney clustered around; so did I and Pris. "This is Pris Frauenzimmer. And this is my partner, Louis Rosen."
"Happy, Mr. Rosen," Barrows shook hands with me. "This is Mrs. Nild, my secretary. This gentleman is Mr. Blunk, my counsel." We all shook hands around. "Cold out here on the field, isn't it?" Barrows started for the entrance of the building. He moved so swiftly that we all had to gallop after him like a flock of big awkward animals. Mr. Blunk's short legs pumped away as in a speeded-up old movie; he did not seem to mind, however; he continued to radiate cheerfulness.
"Boise," he declared, gazing around him. "Boise, Idaho. What will they think of next?"
Colleen Nild, falling in beside me, greeted me. "Nice to see you again, Mr. Rosen. We found the Stanton creature quite delightful."
"A fabulous construct," Blunk boomed back at us; we were lagging behind. "We thought it was from the Bureau of Internal Revenue." He gave me a hearty personal smile.
Up front walked Barrows and Maury; Pris had dropped back because the concourse door was so narrow. Barrows and Maury passed on inside and Pris followed next, then Mr. Blunk, then Colleen Nild and I taking up the rear. By the time we had passed through the building and outside again onto the street entrance where the taxis waited, Barrows and Maury had already located the limousine; the uniformed driver was holding one of the rear doors open and Barrows and Maury were crawling inside.
"Luggage?" I said to Mrs. Nild.
"No luggage. Too time-consuming to wait for it. We're only going to be here a few hours and then we're flying back. Probably late tonight. If we should stay over we'll buy what we need."
"Um," I said, impressed.
The rest of us also crawled into the limousine; the driver hopped around, and soon we were out in traffic, on our way into Boise proper.
"I don't see how the Stanton can set up a law office in Seattle," Maury was saying to Barrows. "It's not licensed to practice law in the State of Washington."
"Yes, I think you'll be seeing it again one of these days." Barrows offered Maury, then me, a cigarette from his case.
Summing it up I decided that Barrows differed from the rest of us in that he looked as if he had grown his gray English wool suit the way an animal grows its fur; it was simply part of him, like his nails and his teeth. He was utterly unconscious of it, as well as of his tie, his shoes, his cigarette case--he was unconscious of everything about his appearance.
So that's how it is to be a multi-millionaire, I decided.
A long jump from the bottom rung like myself, where the preoccupation is, I wonder if my fly is unzipped. That's the dregs, people like me, stealing swift covert glances down. Sam K. Barrows never stole a covert look at his fly in his life. If it was unzipped he'd simply zip it up. I wish I was rich, I said to myself.
I felt depressed. My condition was hopeless. I had not even gotten to the stage of worrying about the knot of my necktie, like other men. I probably never would.
And in addition Barrows was a really good-looking guy, sort of Robert Montgomery-shaped. Not handsome like Montgomery; for now Barrows had removed his dark glasses and I saw that he had puffy wrinkled skin beneath his eyes. But he's got that athletic build, probably from playing handball in a five thousand dollar private handball court. And he's got a top-notch doctor who doesn't let him swill cheap liquor or beer of any kind; he never eats in drive-ins . . . probably never eats any cut of pork, and only those eye lambchops, and only steak and roast type cuts of beef.
Naturally he hasn't got an ounce of extra flab on him, with a diet like that. It depressed me even more.
Now I could see how those bowls of stewed prunes at six o'clock in the morning and those four-mile jogs through the deserted early dawn streets at five a.m. fitted in. The eccentric young millionaire whose picture appeared in _Look_ was not going to drop dead at forty from heart trouble; he intended to live and enjoy his wealth. No widow would inherit it, contrary to the national pattern.
Eccentric, hell.
_Smart_.


The time was a little after seven in the evening as our limousine entered Boise itself, and Mr. Barrows and his two companions announced that they had not eaten dinner. Did we know of a good restaurant in Boise?