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Isle Of The Dead :: Zelazny Roger
Страница: 33 из 110So you can't condemn it as an abstractprinciple if--"
"Crap!" he said. "So they hurt, rape, steal and screw themselves up over different things. It's still because beauty sits there demanding violation."
"Then how can you blame an individual object--"
"We do business with Rigelians, don't we?"
"Yes."
"Then it can be translated. Enough said."
Then the good-looking guy at the bar who'd been trying to pick up the broad in the green dress passed by on his way to the Men's Room and called Nick Shorty when he asked him to move his chair out of the way. That ended our evening in that bar.
Nick swore he'd die with his boots on, on some exotic safari, but he found his Kiimanjaro in a hospital on Earth, where they'd cured everything that was bothering him, except for the galloping pneumonia he'd picked up in the hospital.
That had been, roughly, two hundred and fifty years ago. I'd been a pallbearer.
* * *
I mashed out my cigarette and made my way back to the slip-sled. Whatever was rotten in Midi, I'd find it out later. It was time to go.
The dead are too much with us.
* * *
For two weeks, I puzzled over what I'd found and I kept myself fit. When I entered the Homefree system, my life was further complicated by the fact that Homefree had picked up an additional satellite. Not a natural one, either.
WHAT THE HELL, EXCLAMATION, I sent ahead in code.
VISITOR, came the reply. LANDING PERMISSION REQUESTED STOP DENIED STOP STILL CIRCLING STOP SAYS HES AN EARTH INTELLIGENCE MAN STOP
LET HIM LAND, I said, HALF A HOUR AFTER IM DOWN STOP
There came the acknowledgment, and I swung into a tight orbit and pushed the _Model T_ down and around and down.
After a frolic with the beasts, I repaired to my home for a shower, shucked my Conner face, then dressed for dinner.
It would appear that something finally meant enough to the wealthiest government in existence for someone to at last authorize a trip on the part of some underpaid civil servant in one of the cheapest interstellar vehicles available.
I vowed to at least feed him well.
III
Lewis Briggs and I regarded one another across the remains of dinner and the wide table they occupied. His identification papers informed me that he was an agent of Earth's Central Intelligence Department. He looked like a shaved monkey. He was a wizened little guy with a perpetually inquisitive stare, and it seemed as if he must be pushing retirement age.
"Crap!" he said. "So they hurt, rape, steal and screw themselves up over different things. It's still because beauty sits there demanding violation."
"Then how can you blame an individual object--"
"We do business with Rigelians, don't we?"
"Yes."
"Then it can be translated. Enough said."
Then the good-looking guy at the bar who'd been trying to pick up the broad in the green dress passed by on his way to the Men's Room and called Nick Shorty when he asked him to move his chair out of the way. That ended our evening in that bar.
Nick swore he'd die with his boots on, on some exotic safari, but he found his Kiimanjaro in a hospital on Earth, where they'd cured everything that was bothering him, except for the galloping pneumonia he'd picked up in the hospital.
That had been, roughly, two hundred and fifty years ago. I'd been a pallbearer.
* * *
I mashed out my cigarette and made my way back to the slip-sled. Whatever was rotten in Midi, I'd find it out later. It was time to go.
The dead are too much with us.
* * *
For two weeks, I puzzled over what I'd found and I kept myself fit. When I entered the Homefree system, my life was further complicated by the fact that Homefree had picked up an additional satellite. Not a natural one, either.
WHAT THE HELL, EXCLAMATION, I sent ahead in code.
VISITOR, came the reply. LANDING PERMISSION REQUESTED STOP DENIED STOP STILL CIRCLING STOP SAYS HES AN EARTH INTELLIGENCE MAN STOP
LET HIM LAND, I said, HALF A HOUR AFTER IM DOWN STOP
There came the acknowledgment, and I swung into a tight orbit and pushed the _Model T_ down and around and down.
After a frolic with the beasts, I repaired to my home for a shower, shucked my Conner face, then dressed for dinner.
It would appear that something finally meant enough to the wealthiest government in existence for someone to at last authorize a trip on the part of some underpaid civil servant in one of the cheapest interstellar vehicles available.
I vowed to at least feed him well.
III
Lewis Briggs and I regarded one another across the remains of dinner and the wide table they occupied. His identification papers informed me that he was an agent of Earth's Central Intelligence Department. He looked like a shaved monkey. He was a wizened little guy with a perpetually inquisitive stare, and it seemed as if he must be pushing retirement age.