Читать книгу Fantastic Stories Presents: Science Fiction Super Pack #1 - Edmond Hamilton - Страница 48

I spend the night in Facilities pounding the walls. The loonie goons took my guitar and emptied my pockets so there’s no mucking about with the locks. I get a cold sandwich and bug juice at some point, then this big bruiser of a goon shows up to take me to see the Boss.

Boss Mead.

This is the big cheese, head of Brahe City Security. A no-nonsense, cheerless heavy who ain’t never had a good word for the moonunits or anyone else who skates on this side of legitimacy. Bet he’s tone deaf too. We come to an office and I sit in a chair and wait. The big loonie goon stands by the door and keeps a watchful eye on li’l ole me.

Man, this is like being sent to the principal’s office-triple-squared. Maybe Mead’s not a bad guy, I tell myself. Maybe he’s got a wife and kids and spends quiet off hours playing board games and the like. He might read poetry to puppies for all I know. But hell, the door opens and in he comes all gleaming in his blues ‘n whites and looks at me. I don’t see Major Mead the family man, I see Boss Mead, the hardass who’s gonna bounce my ass downside for no good reason.

Shit.

End of the line, Digger, old boy. You kept your nose clean and you didn’t make a nuisance of yourself and you helped out from time to time and it’s still gonna end with the big dump on the wrong side of the gravity well.

Mead sits behind the desk and calls up something on a datapad, reading all quiet like there is nothing major happening at all. I’ve been up here for almost five years. Five! And he’s acting like deporting me is as routine as deciding whether he’s going to have the pudding or the pie for dessert.

Oh sure, I think of jumping out of that chair and dashing out. If I could make it through the Concourse, maybe I could evade for a week or three with a sprinkle of hope that if I stay under their radar long enough they’ll forget all about it as a bad job and we could go back to normal.

Yeah. That’d be the thing.

Except I’ve got this big-ass uniformed goon stationed at the door behind me, ready to break me in two if I sneeze without warning. Yeah, sure.

Fuck it. If I gotta go, let me go with style. Make some kind of raised-middle-finger gesture to the Man and to hell with the rest. I get this crazy idea. Fucking insane and start undoing the fastens on my jumpsuit. Maybe a little creative streaking is in order.

“What the hell are you doing?” barks Mead, looking up from the file. From behind me, big meaty hands clamp down on my shoulders.

I force myself to relax under the grip and continue working on the suit. As soon as big boy lets me go, I can slither out of it soon enough. “Getting naked. Why not? You’re going to boot me out no matter, like a baby from the womb, so why not indulge?”

The hands grip my shoulders tighter and the goon leans on me real hard, hard enough to even make a difference Up Here. Mead just stares at me, this totally dumbfounded expression on his pugly. He looks at me for about half a minute, then sits back and shakes his head. He waves a hand at the goon who hesitates, then releases me and leaves the room. I start to shuck out of my suit.

“Stop that,” snaps Mead, like I’m a child. Well, duh.

And suddenly sure I feel all foolish and the like. I’m making no great claims to rational thinking at this time. Futile dumb toddlerbabe gestures can’t be the best I can do. I’ll skip the tantrums and go with dignity, boy. But whatever the hell is going to happen, I’m still going to make him work for it. I refasten my suit and sit there.

He puts down the datapad and folds his hands. Then he looks me over with a disapproving kind of frown.

“Rough day?” he asks.

Okay, so I’m rumpled and wrinkled. You’d be too. And I’m a little irked. “Rough week. What’s the story? You can’t toss me. I got valid chits.”

Mead sits back and presses a button on the desk. A computer screen flashes on. “Joseph Dagwood Hill,” he reads, “born in Syracuse, NY. Attended Brown University. Majored in engineering but dropped out midway through junior year. Formed a band called Diaspora then disappeared from the music scene a year later. You reappeared at Brahe City under the name Joe Hill but go by Digger while on the Concourse. You’ve been here for over four years and nine months which makes you the longest-lasting civilian transient on the station.”