"Ron Goulart - Nemo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goulart Ron)

old man gestured at the landtruck in the background. Emblazoned on its
side were the enormous words Woodruff's Instant Patriotic Breakfast
Popps! "Thousands of schoolchildren all over the South are awaiting the
cheerful arrival of a friendly Woodruff truck. I don't suppose, though, you
understand a man who has a true calling, seeing as you're stuck in a
dead-end job."
"Do all your drivers dress up like Uncle Sam?"
"Some are Abraham Lincoln," said Woodruff. "Tell Haley to phone her
poor infirm father soon as she gets home."
"I have to get back to a guy on my lawn who—"
"If only Haley's mother had lived. If only my little girl hadn't left me. If
only—"
"Goodbye. God bless America." Ted flicked off the screen. "Don't accept
any more calls from that old lush."
"That's no way to refer to your wife's poor infirm father," observed the
house.
"If it weren't for him . . ." Ted shook his head, went trotting back to the
window. "Hey, Mr.
Swedenberg, you saw some guy on our lawn taking pictures?" "It may
not have been a camera. Some sort of instrument, possibly a camera. Is he
perhaps someone you hired to do a job for you?"
"I haven't hired anybody to do anything. What did he look like?"
"I think he was a black man. He was very much bundled up for such a
lovely autumnal morning."
To his house Ted said, "Didn't you see the other one out there?"
 "No, sir," replied the voice of the house computer. "We saw no one
except Swedenberg, and he's okay. Anyone strange and the alarms, I
assure you, would have gone off."
Ted frowned for a few seconds. "Probably some kind of maintenance
man— most of them have electronic immunity." Out to Swedenberg he
said, "Well, goodbye, Mr. Swedenberg, nice talking to you." He turned off
the hand mike.
Ted made his way to the ramp leading to the primary living room. This
way he'd see Haley as soon as she got back from the graveyard shift at the
children's hospital.
An olive-green chair met him at the doorway. Ted sat, the chair rolled
him over closer to the TV wall. The wall image popped on.
Sprawled corpses, stick-thin, filled the big screen. ". . . and so another
small nation, this time Angola, has starved to death. Late last night United
Nations observers flew over the capital and determined that less than five
percent of the population was left alive." The telescope camera roamed
along the dry twilight street, ticking off the dead.
Ted looked away. "I don't like to see stuff like this, not so early in the
morning, anyway."
"How do you feel when you view scenes such as this?" asked a jovial,
and deep, voice. "Guilty maybe?"
It was Dr. Norvell Perola. This was the show Ted wanted to watch after
all.
"Well, chums, I am here to tell you you needn't bother feeling bad,"
continued Dr. Perola. A giant bald man he was, with an enormous grin