"Mack Reynolds - Planetary Agent X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

Higher Power and if It ever wants to get in touch with you, It
will?”
“Um-m-m. In Its own good time. Sort of a don’t call Me thing,
I’ll call you.”
The personnel officer said, “There have been a few revealed
religions, you know.”
“So they said, so they said. None of them have made much
sense to me. If a Super-Power wanted to contact man, it seems
unlikely to me that it’d be all wrapped up in a lot of complicated
gobbledegook. It would all be very clear indeed.”
The personnel officer sighed. He marked the card, stuck it
back into the slot in his order box and it disappeared.
He looked up at Ronny Bronston. “All right, that’s all.”
Ronny came to his feet. “Well, what happened?”
The other grinned at him sourly. “Darned if I know,” he said.
“By the time you get to the outer office, you’ll probably find out.”
He scratched the end of his nose and said, “I sometimes wonder
what I’m doing here.”
Ronny thanked him, told him goodbye, and left.


In the outer office a girl looked up from a card she’d just
pulled from her own order box. “Ronald Bronston?”
“That’s right.”
She handed the card to him. “You’re to go to the office of
Ross Metaxa in the Octagon, Commissariat of Interplanetary
Affairs, Department of Justice, Bureau of Investigation, Section
G.”
In a lifetime spent in first preparing for United Planets
employment and then working for the organization, Ronny
Bronston had never been in the Octagon Building. He’d seen
photographs, Tri-D broadcasts and he’d heard several thousand
jokes on various levels from pun to obscenity about getting around
in the building, but he’d never been there. For that matter, he’d
never been in Greater Washington before, other than a long ago
tourist trip. Population Statistics, his department, had its main
offices in New Copenhagen.
His card was evidently all that he needed for entry.
At the sixth gate he dismissed his car and let it shoot back
into the traffic mess. He went up to one of the guard-guides and
presented the card.
The guide inspected it. “Section G of the Bureau of
Investigation,” he muttered. “Every day, something new. I never
heard of it.”
“It’s probably some outfit in charge of cleaning the heads on
space liners,” Ronny said unhappily. He’d never heard of it either.
“Well, it’s no problem,” the guard-guide said. He summoned
a three-wheel scooter, fed the coördinates into it from Ronny’s
card, handed the card back and flipped an easy salute. “You’ll soon
know.”