"Robert F. Young - Hologirl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

he was doing it, but he was doing it, and, that being so, why hadn't he done it to me? I'd seen him
swallow, hadn't I? And where did Cecily Sturmi Kurilman fit in? Surely she must have a bigger piece of
the action than her role as sec.-treasr.-receptionist would suggest.
An electricab pulled up in front of the main entrance, and a girl in a gown came out and got in. A
hobo-girl? The corner streetlight was too faraway to shed much light on the scene. I doubt whether I'd
have been able to tell anyway.
Just to make sure, I decided to wait for a repeat performance, and let the cab take off without tailing
it.
A short while later another cab pulled up, and another girl in a gown came out and got in. This time,
when the cab took off, I followed.
I know Idealia like a book, and before the cab had gone three blocks, I knew it was headed for the
Tryst Inn. So I got ahead of it and was parked across the street when it pulled up opposite the entrance.
The girl in the gown got out, paid the driver with money she took from her shoe (she had no handbag),
and ran up a shrub-bordered walk to the door. I got a halfway decent look at her in the wan radiance of
the entrance light as she let herself in, and something about her — exactly what it was, I couldn't fathom
— gave me a bad turn. It was a feeling sort of like deja vu, at least in the sense that it came and went so
fast I couldn't pin it down.
By the time I gained the little lobby, she was already on her way up in the elevator. The indicator
stopped at 5. The lobby was empty, as one would expect at that time of night. Next to the elevator was a
buzzer with which to summon the night clerk. Next to that hung the Tryst Inn directory.
An Idealia ordinance requires that all such directories be updated daily. So I knew when I peered at
the names that they weren't those of persons who had checked out umpteen years ago.
Only three rooms on the fifth floor were occupied: 502 by a John Olms, 507 by a Clinton Adams
and 510 by a Charles Proveno. It's not hard to spot an alias, and an alias was what I was looking for.
Why? Because pseudo-prestigious hostelries like the Tryst Inn are made to order for middle-income
out-of-towners who like to shack up with call girls, and middle-income out-of-towners generally cherish
their good names.
I settled for "Clinton Adams." It had just the right pseudo-prestigious flavor.
I waited for a while before going up. It's de rigueur for call girls to make small talk before jumping
into bed with a client, and it was unlikely a Kurilman hologirl would go against the grain. Clients have to
be taken into consideration too. Sometimes they're up-tight and need to be put at ease.
How do I know? I've been around, that's how.
While I waited, I checked my Laseroid to see whether it was loaded properly. It was. After ten
minutes had gone by, I stepped into the elevator, which had dutifully returned to lobby level, and told it to
take me up to the fifth floor. A narrow hallway, garishly carpeted. Forty-watt lamps burning at either end.
Walls with sleazy roses seeming to grow out of them. Opposite 507, I set my Laseroid on the floor, got a
small vial out of my handbag and squeezed a few drops of lock acid into the keyhole (for obvious
reasons, hotels have never gone in for printlocks). Then I replaced the vial and armed myself with the
Laseroid.
The floor plan of a pseudo-prestigious hotel-room is simplicity itself: bed on one wall, 3V set facing it
on the opposite; two chairs, o next to the archway leading to the commode-shower, the other beside the
bed; one table. Illumination is supplied by a single overhead light, one switch located over the headboard
of the bed, the other to the left of the door jamb.
I waited the sixty seconds necessary for the lock acid to do its work, then I turned the knob, stepped
inside and switched on the light. My Laseroid was already pointed in the right direction. When the bed
appeared on the viewer, I turned the knob, and the brief brightness of the laser beams revealed to my
right eye what the holo-film recorded: Kurilman's client banging away like sixty—
Banging me!

The little whore didn't dematerialize till quarter after eight the next morning. I stood guard at the door