Читать книгу Galaxy Jane - Ron Goulart - Страница 7

Chapter 5

“Come in.” Vicky yanked the door of her stateroom on the Bel Air Deck angrily open wide. “Boy, I’m really in a tizzy.”

Summer entered the cabin, which was twice the size of his and smelled of wild flowers. “Don’t say anything until—”

“Oh, if you mean the darn bug that somebody planted in here, we already found that thing.” The blond young woman reached around him to give the neowood door a shove that caused it to shut with a shivering slam. “I complained to that dim-witted young android from PR who came around to show me a dippy movie about the Hollywood II. Gosh, he had the vidscreen built into the oddest—”

“One bug?”

“Relax, old timer.” Scoop was sitting sideways in a tufted styrochair, metal legs dangling over the arm. “I checked the whole joint out. Got a detector built into my pinky.”

“Even so.” Taking his own bugsniffer from his pocket, Summer began a circuit of the parlor.

Vicky was wearing a two-piece white jeansuit and matching boots. “The thing that really annoys me is that this constitutes interference with the freedom of the press.” She folded her arms under her breasts. “And that’s something that’s guaranteed in the constitutions of all the planets in the Barnum System except maybe—”

“Bing,” said the gadget in Summer’s hand.

Nodding, he reached up behind the tri-op painting of a field of grazing grouts. “Here’s another,” he said, flicking the spy device to the young woman.

Vicky caught it, brought it up close to her lips and shouted, “I hope this blows your darn eardrums out, you spying so and—”

“Relax, angelcake,” said the camera robot. “I bet gramps here palmed that to impress you. I never miss a—”

“The Barnum Drug Bureau planted it,” corrected Summer. “Apparently they stick ’em hither and yon aboard this spacecraft.”

“They do? Then that means our tip about—”

“Stay mum,” advised Summer as he headed for the next room.

“You don’t expect to find more listening dornicks?” Vicky asked, following him. “What I mean is, Scoop is customized. Did I mention that already? The surveillance detecting gear he has built in to him sells at wholesale—wholesale, mind you—for a six-figure—”

“Let’s get rid of that BDB one first.” Retrieving it, he deposited the thing in the gold-rimmed dispozhole.

“Very impressive, the way you can still bend over like that, Summer,” observed Scoop from his perch in the parlor. “Could be your body isn’t yet as infirm as your brain.”

“Want me to show you how to switch him off when he’s not in use?” Summer offered, while circling the large oval bathpool on hands and knees.

“Oh, that’s only his idea of good-natured kidding,” said Vicky, watching Summer. “They built that into him. Journalistic badinage is the term for it.”

“That’s your term for…Ah, yeah.” With the aid of the bugsniffer he located a third spying device. One that was very similar to the unidentifiable one he’d found in his own cabin. When Summer stood, his left knee made a faint crackling sound.

“I make no comment on that telltale noise,” said Scoop. “I refrain from pointing out that old coots are noted for their creaking joints and bones. Which is only to be expected when you build with a calcium-based material rather than a dependable alloy like—”

“That’s enough teasing,” suggested Vicky.

After studying the device for a moment, Summer consigned it to the ship’s disposal system. “Found one in my quarters, too.”

“How the heck many people are interested in our digging into this Zombium smugg—”

“Wait.”

She pressed her fingers to her lips. “More?”

Summer continued his search. Finally, after five more minutes of poking around, he said, “That seems to be all.”

Vicky went back into the parlor to sit on the edge of the lucite sofa. “Okay, the first bug is probably courtesy of the Hollywood II security people. Right?”

“Yep.”

“And you say the second one is from the Barnum Drug Bureau.”

“More than likely, yes.” He sat on a sudocanvas bucketchair. “It’s that third bug I’m puzzled by.”

She frowned. “You mean we might have somebody spying just on us?”

“I’ll check out a few more cabins at random,” Summer told her. “If it turns out you and I are the only ones with that extra spy device, then—”

“But nobody can know what we’re really up to,” she said. “What I mean is, at least a dozen other reporters and such boarded when the Hollywood II docked on Barnum. All to do writeups and vidreports on the making of Galaxy Jane. We’re merely, far as anyone is supposed to know, more of the same. Why single us out for special—”

“That’s one of the things,” said Summer, “I’ll have to find out.”

Resting her palms on her knees, Vicky said, “I’ve been doing quite a lot of research on Zombium, Mr. Summer, and—”

“Start calling me Jack.”

“Well, okay. It’s just that I’m still sort of in awe of you,” she said. “What I mean is, when I was still a kid in private school way off in the Earth System I was reading your wonderful pieces in Muckrake, which I had to sneak into my dorm because we—”

“Angelcake, this sort of gush’ll rust my screws,” complained Scoop, swinging his big metal feet to the parlor floor.

“We’ll need some background footage,” Summer said in the cambot’s direction. “Now that the ship’s taken off, you can roam the decks gathering—”

“Wait a sec, palsy walsy. I call my own shots on what gets filmed and—”

“Not this trip. So go on out and start—”

“Vicky, are you going to let this duffer order me—”

“Mr. Summer…Jack’s in charge,” said Vicky. “Run along and do some of that incisive filming you’re noted for.”

“I hate to leave you alone with this bozo.” Slowly, with evident reluctance, Scoop rose from his chair. “Remember the info I got on him out of the NewzNet personnel files? He turns out to be near as bad as the crazed shutterbug he used to work with, especially when it comes to making passes at young, innocent maidens or even—”

“That’ll be enough.” She pointed at the door. “Stay away awhile, too.”

“Okay, okay, I’ll breeze.” The robot opened the door. “Holler if he gets grabby.” He left them.

“I apologize for Scoop,” said the young woman. “Could be they put too much good-natured kidding in him. Anyway, we’re both professionals, Jack, and I certainly feel more than safe alone with you.”

“Most everybody does.”

“I wasn’t too familiar with Zombium until I got this assignment,” she resumed. “In my schools alcohol and brainstimmers were much more popular than drugs like Zombium. It sounds like pretty dangerous stuff, though, from what I’ve been learning.”

“Zombium is tricky,” he said. “The first few times you use the stuff—orally in powdered form, usually—you just feel incredibly euphoric and untroubled.”

“You ever tried any?”

He shook his head. “Nope, but I did a lot of research, talked to users, a few years back.”

“Oh, that’s right. I read that series in Muckrake,” she said. “In fact, it was to you that Flo Haypenny admitted her longtime addiction to Zombium.”

“And her cure.”

“You think she’ll be uneasy having you around while she’s starring in Galaxy Jane?”

“Been years since all that happened.”

Vicky said, “As I understand it, after the first few doses things can get worse.”

“Usually, in order to keep the euphoria coming, you have to keep increasing the amount you take,” he explained. “The stronger the dose the greater the chance of slipping into a deathlike trance. Again, the severity of the trances increase, too. Initial trances last from a few hours up to a day, but later on they can stretch to weeks or even months. And about a third of the longtime users rise up and walk around, somnambulist style, during the trances. Causing them no end of problems and accidents.”

“According to the statistics in The Galactic Guide to Licit & Illicit Drugs, something like fourteen percent of long-term Zombium users never come out of their trances at all. They just stay that way until they die.”

“Closer to twenty-five percent.”

She shivered once. “That’s sort of awful.”

Summer stood. “It is,” he agreed. “But smuggling and peddling the drug is also a great way to get rich. That makes the dealers, some of whom may well be sharing our trip on the fabled Hollywood II with us, nasty and rough. Especially when reporters come along who intend to futz up their business by doing video exposes.”

“I understand that, yes, and I can look out for myself,” she said, rising. “Although I am a little unsettled by Scoop’s not finding those other bugs.”

“Let’s get to the story conference.” He crossed to the doorway. “So we can start impressing all and sundry with how interested we are in the making of Galaxy Jane.”