"Brian Herbert - The Race for God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

whenever he undipped the holster flap. He could never shoot a human, and only once, with an obstinate MDB missionary,
he even drawn the piece. Orbust had toyed with the ammo clip while the terrified missionary glanced around for avenues o
escape.
Supposedly military-issue, the gun was part of a miniaturized weapons and demolition kit he picked up cheap from a
door-to-door Bureau of Loyalty-sanctioned armaments salesman. It was a 100 percent prepayment deal, where Orbust rec
part of the kit on the spot and the rest was supposed to be shipped to him. Secreted cleverly in the holster and the belt wer
chemstrip and an array of kill-stun-disable-destroy devices, not all of which worked as represented. Orbust never did recei
additional items in the mail. He had tested what he had on a bunch of old factory-closeout androids and mechanized taxide
animals that another salesman had unloaded on him earlier, and only half of the devices in the kit worked at all. Some, like
GI Randy Handy Dandy Automatic Lasso, were out and out duds. But the salesman had left him with no address or teleph
number, and there were no brand names on anything to contact manufacturers.
Despite all this, the kit was easily worth its price. The pistol worked admirably, blowing a running droidman in half with
surprisingly little recoil. Also, the chemstrip was, in Orbust's words: "neat." A long white strip of plazymer-like material wit
built-in microprocessor, it was activated when a user spoke into it, explaining a particular chemical need. The strip then
metamorphosed into what looked like a butterfly, and flew off.
Within a few minutes it would return, carrying a white plazyrner bag suspended from a harness arrangement under its "b
After setting down, the strip would again become a strip, absorbing the butterfly and the bag and revealing the bag's
contents—sometimes pellets, sometimes Plexiglas-like pump sprayers, sometimes vials of liquid or powder. Orbust had
employed the device for rat killer, spot remover, and even a miraculous concoction that when sprayed over the fence onto
next door neighbor's unruly pet harbor seal prevented the animal from barking for four weeks, without apparent permanent
harm.
Orbust hadn't yet ordered food with the chemstrip, fearing it might malfunction and poison him. He wondered where it
obtained raw materials, hoped it was from the natural environment and not from a private party. But the device was
BOL-sanctioned, so he didn't have to worry about that. The chemstrip became like a light switch to him, activated when ne
without too much thought about its workings.
The weapons kit and quick-draw Babul weren't all Johnny Orbust had in his arsenal-for-God.
 In a sheath strapped to one calf he kept his Snapcard, the ultimate verbal combat weapon, the photon bomb of debating.
He didn't use it all the time, because he feared atrophy of the brain, worried about over-reliance on the card. Something c
happen to it, and if he lost it where would he be? Nonetheless he had grown more dependent on it than he would have liked
The Snapcard was, for all intents and purposes, irreplaceable.
Orbust was, according to his wife Karin, a "money-squandering gadget freak," and the devices he had all over the house
a constant source of arguments.
He hadn't made his high-school debating team. Then in college he vaulted onto the first team, with the help of this card, a
card, really. Another salesman had been his salvation with this baby, an elderly Floriental gentleman who showed up early
Monday morning and spoke of recent cataract and back surgery as much as he did of his wares, apparently to elicit sympa
But Orbust hadn't liked anything the man showed him on the first go-around. A perennial sucker for sales pitches, Orbus
been a solicitor himself for a time, marketing advertising novelties . . . and an old saying held that the easiest person to sell
another salesman. But on this occasion Orbust was slow to buy. It was early, he felt tired from not having slept well, and h
asked the man to leave.
The salesman requested a glass of water, a familiar stalling technique.
Orbust motioned toward the kitchen. "In there."
Presently the man had a glass of water in hand, and stood in the kitchen doorway, sipping slowly from the glass.
"Look," the salesman said. "I was a merchant on Maros, and we had a tradition there I still follow. You're the first custom
of the week and I have to make a sale or my whole week is ruined."
"All right, all right. Whattaya have for under five javits?"
The man shook his head, and his epicanthic eyes narrowed, "No, it must be a real sale. Something valuable."
"But you don't have anything I want or need. I'd like to help you out, but I'm tired and—"
"I have just the thing," the salesman said, smiling in a strange way that revealed the gums of his teeth.
He set the glass on a table, reached down and lifted one pant leg. From a calf-strapped sheath he removed a slender silv
metallic card.