"Robert A. Heinlein - Assignment in eternity (Collected Storie" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

two-credit piece and passed it over. “There’s your cumshaw. Now beat it,
before I kick your tail up around your shoulders.”
“You and who else?”
Gilead chuckled and moved away down the con- course toward the station
entrance to the New Age Hotel. His subconscious sentries informed him
immediately that the runner had not gone back toward the lift as expected,
but was keeping abreast him in the crowd. He considered this. The runner
might very well be what he appeared to be, common city riffraff who
combined casual thievery with his overt occupation. On the other hand-
He decided to unload. He stepped suddenly off the sidewalk into the
entrance of a drugstore and stopped Just inside the door to buy a
newspaper. While his copy was being printed, he scooped up, apparently
as an afterthought, three standard pneumo mailing tubes. As he paid for
them he palmed a pad of gummed address labels.


3
A glance at the mirrored wall showed him that his shadow had hesitated
outside but was still watching him. Gilead went on back to the shop’s soda
fountain and slipped into an unoccupied booth. Although the floor show was
going on-a remarkably shapely ecdysiast was working down toward her last
string of beads-he drew the booth’s curtain.
Shortly the call light over the booth flashed discreetly; he called, “Come in!”
A pretty and very young waitress came inside the curtain. Her plastic
costume covered without concealing.
She glanced around. “Lonely?”
“No, thanks, I’m tired.”
“How about a redhead, then? Real cute-“
“I really am tired. Bring me two bottles of beer, unopened, and some
pretzels.”
“Suit yourself, sport.” She left.
With speed he opened the travel bag, selected nine spools of microfilm, and
loaded them into the three mailing tubes, the tubes being of the common
three-spool size. Gilead then took the filched pad of address labels,
addressed the top one to “Raymond Calhoun, P. 0. Box 1060, Chicago” and
commenced to draw with great care in the rectangle reserved for electric-
eye sorter. The address he shaped in arbitrary symbols was intended not to
be read, but to be scanned automatically. The hand-written address was
merely a precaution, in case a robot sorter should reject his hand-drawn
symbols as being imperfect and thereby turn the tube over to a human
postal clerk for readdressing.
He worked fast, but with the care of an engraver. The waitress returned
before he had finished. The call light warned him; he covered the label with
his elbow and kept it covered.
She glanced at the mailing tubes as she put down the beer and a bowl of
pretzels. “Want me to mail those?”
He had another instant of split-second indecision. When he had stepped out
of the tube car he had been reasonably sure, first, that the persona of Joel
Abner, commercial traveler, had not been penetrated, and, second, that the
transition from Abner to Gilead had been accomplished without arousing