"The Diploids" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Katherine)

A light came into the eyes of the dapper old man as he saw Breden. With a quick move he jumped to his feet, bringing a gun up from somewhere below screen range. “I’ve got you now, Breden. I suspected it a long time, and now I know what you are.”

For a half second of time Breden started to laugh, then he remembered the shot on the street a quarter hour before with a sudden cold jolt. Devon was not kidding.

“Careful there, old boy, you’ll break your scanner,” Nadine called.

His screen couldn’t see her, and the tailored neat old man was childishly startled. “Who said that!” He leaned forward, peering, then turned to inspect the partially visible room showing on the screen, the gun waving in his hand. “I’ve got to kill him,” he said clearly to no one in particular. “He’s a diploid.” He dwindled and came into full view further away, peered around and then wandered out of screen view.

“Crazy,” Breden muttered. He felt weak. That last meaningless word had been a shock. “Have the police trace the call. I’ll try to hold him.” He handed her one of the phones.

The old man had wandered back to his screen and he glimpsed the motion. He whirled, gun leveled. “Don’t try to escape!”

Breden pulled his hand back and arranged his features in an expression of respect and interest. He felt shaken. Diploid. Judging by Devon’s voice it meant something different from a human. It had been a long time since he had heard that inflection in anyone’s tone. The meaningless word rang in his ears as if he had been called something animal. He forced himself to think. What would hold an inventor’s interest long enough for the police to reach him? “I gather that that gun shoots through television screens. Could you give me an idea how it works, Mister Devon?”

Nadine was murmuring into the phone, “Yes, with a gun. It looks like a private room he’s calling from.” She turned and whispered, “What’s your number?”

“Lascar B-1063,” Breden said, without turning his head. On the screen Devon was looking down at his automatic.

“It’s an invention—” he said, looking up at the sound of Breden’s voice—“a new Devon invention.” The old man stroked it fondly with his left hand without turning it from its perfect pictured aim at Breden’s face. It looked startlingly deadly in full stereo pointing at him from the screen.

Breden pulled his eyes from it, resisting an irrational impulse to switch off the screen. “How does it work?”

If only he could keep this conversation going for a while the police would come on to the screen in the room behind Devon and take him away.

The inventor’s voice began to rise. “I won’t tell you. It’s secret. And you’re not going to stop me from patenting it like you did the others. You sneaking diploids are trying to get in everywhere. But I won’t let you have the Earth. You can’t fool me! I know what you are. You’re not going to hold up progress by keeping people from getting patents—” His voice had risen to a shriek; his face was distorted, “I’ll stop you! I’ll kill you… I’ll kill you right now!” The shots came with a shocking crack of sound. The screen was too clear, too tri-dimensional, too much like an undefended open window through which a yammering madman poured shots at him. Instinctively Breden threw himself to one side and half rose before he could check the motion.

The vision of the shouting old man cracked across like a broken mirror and, still moving, began to waver in ripples like something seen in disturbed water, then abruptly shattered to darkness. They heard a shriek, “Got you!” just before a final tearing sputter and the dull pfut of a blown fuse as Devon’s sound system went dead.



NADINE had been staring fascinated, but now there was nothing to stare at but the smooth grayness of the viewer screen. “He just shot his televiewer all to hell.” she said into the phone, still staring fascinated at the screen. “It blew out… that’s right. We’ll leave it on.” She put the phone back in its cradle with a sigh. “They said not to switch off.”

Her expression changed as she looked at him. “What is it, Mart? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Another spasm of depression hit him. “Oh hell yes—everything. You heard him call me a diploid?”

She took out a cigarette case and opened it, selecting a cigarette with unnecessary care. She was concerned. “One of those little green men, you mean? Smoke?”

“No thanks.”

She untelescoped a long cigarette holder and fitted the cigarette into it, speaking thoughtfully, “I heard him. It was nothing personal, Mart. For a paranoid there always has to be the deros or the spies or the Martians, and the big conspiracy somehow against him. It had to be someone, and you were elected. You must see enough nuts coming in here with lunatic inventions and delusions of grandeur to be used to it.”

He leaned forward and lit her cigarette. “Too used to it. Beginning to wonder.” He put away his cigarette lighter and held up his hand, looking at it. Five fingers and a thumb. Too many fingers.

“Right up to high school they called me “Marty” for “Martian Breden”—and it wasn’t a friendly nickname. I was with a gang, but I was its goat. If we played cops and robbers—I was the robber, and got arrested or electrocuted, or shot resisting arrest. If we played cowboys and Indians—I tried to burn people at the stake and got my throat slit by a hero with a bowie knife, and bit the dust. In high school they started getting smarter, and I had friends who were friends, but for them I was “Marty” too. By that time it was my name. I like it now, but that’s where it came from.”

He put his six-fingered hand down on the desk. “When a new client comes in, now, I mention that the simplest inventions are the best, like the safety pin— or the small labor saving device I invented which makes it easier to play the piano and carry four beer bottles in each hand. ‘What is it?’ they ask… I hold my hand up. ‘Extra finger’ I say. ‘It is patented.’ That always tickles them.”

He had given her the same line when they first met. He remembered that he had felt the same first hostile alertness and expectation of hurt for her as for any other stranger, and had concealed his tension behind the usual line of entertaining talk. She had been just another beautiful woman to him, a lawyer like himself, but more poised and bland than he was—and too beautifully dressed, too efficient, probably critical and unforgiving and egotistical, someone who could hurt you if you dropped your guard.