"C M Kornbluth - The Luckiest Man In Denv" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Up from the eighty-third!

Then May dismissed him with a speech whose implications were deliriously exciting. "I need an able man
and a young one, Reuben. Perhaps I've waited too long looking for him. If you do well in this touchy
business, I'll consider you very seriously for an important task I have in mind."

Late that night, Selene came to his bedroom.

"I know you don't like me," she said pettishly, "butGriffin's such a fool and I wanted somebody to talk
to. Do you mind? What was it like up there today? Did you see carpets? I wish I had a carpet."

He tried to think about carpets and not the exciting contrast of metallic cloth and flesh.

"I saw one through an open door," he remembered. "It looked odd, but I suppose a person gets used to
them. Perhaps I didn't see a very good one. Aren't the good ones very thick?"

"Yes," she said. "Your feet sink into them. I wish I had a good carpet and four chairs and a small table
as high as my knees to put things on and as many pillows as I wanted.Griffin's such a fool. Do you think
111 ever get those things? I've never caught the eye of a general. Am I pretty enough to get one, dccyou
think?"

He said uneasily: "Of course you're a pretty thing, Selene. But carpets and chairs and pillows-" It made
him uncomfortable, like the thought of peering up through binoculars from a parapet.

"I want them," she said unhappily. "I like you very much, but I want so many things and soon I'll be too
old even for the eighty-third level, before I've been up higher, and I'll spend the rest of my life tending
babies or cooking in the creche or the refectory."
She stopped abruptly, pulled herself together, and gave him a smile that was somehow ghastly in the
half-light.

"You bungler," he said, and she instantly looked at the door with the smile frozen on her face. Reuben
took a pistol from under bis pillow and demanded, "When do you expect him?"

"What do you mean?" she asked shrilly. "Who are you talking about?"

"My double. Don't be a fool, Selene. May and I-" he savored it- "May and I know all about it. He
warned me to beware of a diversion by a woman while the double slipped in and killed me. When do
you expect him?"

"I really do like you," Selene sobbed. "But Almon promised to take me up there and I knew when I was
where they'd see me that I'd meet somebody really important. I really do like you, but soon I'll be too
old-"

"Selene, listen to me. Listen^to me! You'll get your chance. Nobody but you and me will know that the
substitution didn't succeed!"

"Then I'll be spying for you on Almon, won't I?" she asked in a choked voice. "All I wanted was a few
nice things before I got too old. All right, I was supposed to be in your arms at 2350 hours."

It was 2349. Reuben sprang from bed and stood by the door, his pistol silenced and ready. At 2350 a