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

or anything. Don't be sympathetic, call the police. Then call me and I'll try
to get off work."
"You don't have to screw up your job over a simple prowler. I can
handle it."
"He's not a prowler if he's carrying around bugging equipment. So
phone the police if there's any sign of him again. You might also try to find
out why the stupid house isn't giving us any warnings."
"Yes, I will, don't get upset—"
Beep! Beep!
The car horn was tooting itself.
"Oops," said Ted. "Almost at the New Westport Jumpoff. I'll call you
from work."
" 'Bye. Love."
The slotway shunted him off onto a manual side road. His car's electric
engine came back on and Ted resumed control of the machine as it
disengaged completely from the NE Slotway.
Was that what was in the dream suitcase? Spy equipment. No, Ted
thought, but you're getting close.
Then he blinked, wondering why he'd thought that.
The Federal Repossession Bureau Office complex consisted of
seventy-five domed rooms of various sizes, all connected by enclosed
opaque ramps. It looked something like a giant sprawl of tangled
dumbbells. Ted's section stood out over the mucky waters of the Sound,
balanced on pastel-shaded pilings.
When Ted came trotting into his office the handsome, impatient face of
young Jay Perlberg was already on the wall of the pixphone screen. "Had a
nice leisurely breakfast, huh?" inquired his Skip Division boss. "Lingered
perhaps over a second cup of nearcaf with your wife?"
Ted watched a gaggle of sooty seagulls flat-footing around on the sticky
sand beneath his office windows rather than look his immediate boss in
the eye. "I'm only eight minutes late." Seating himself at his
boomerang-shape desk, he clicked on the readers, ID boxes, and mappers.
"One of the reasons is that a spade with a—"
"We," the handsome, tanned Perlberg said, "don't care if you're a half
hour late, Ted, so long as you—"
"Eight minutes." Tiny faces were rolling by on the screens of the three
ID boxes, red Xs were commencing to flash on the mapper maps.
"My main concern is that you're happy," said Perlberg. "Are you
happy?"
"Yeah, as a lark."
"Getting along with your wife?"
 "Everything is splendid."
One of the desk-top readers commenced talking to him. ". . . Robert
Able tentatively located in the Andes Mountains of South America, unpaid
for skycar tentatively located parked across the street from a mate-house .
. ."
"Okay, I can see you're anxious to make up for all that lost time," said
his boss, "so I'll sign off."
"Eight minutes," Ted told the now blank screen.
Another reader, after making a metallic throat-clearing noise