Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Out Like a Light by Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer (easy books to read in english txt) 📖
Book online «Out Like a Light by Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer (easy books to read in english txt) 📖». Author Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer
"Can't feel any worse than mine," Malone said cheerily. This, he reflected, was not quite true. Considering everything it had been through recently, his head felt remarkably like its old, carefree self. "You'll feel better once you're awake."
"No, I won't," Boyd said simply. He jammed his head under a pillow and began to snore again. It was an awesome sound, like a man strangling to death in chicken-fat. Malone sighed and poked at random among the bedclothes.
Boyd swore distantly, and Malone poked him again.[Pg 28]
"The sun is up," Malone said, "and all the little pedestrians are chirping. It is time to rise."
Boyd said: "Gah," and withdrew his head from the pillow. Gently, as if he were afraid he were going to fall apart, he rose to a sitting position. When he had arrived at it, he opened his eyes.
"Now," Malone said, "isn't that better?"
Boyd closed his eyes again. "No," he said.
"Come on," Malone said. "We've got to be up and moving."
"I'm up," Boyd said. His eyes flickered open. "But I can't move," he added. "We had quite a time last night."
"We?" Malone said.
"Me, and a couple of girls, and another guy. Just people I met." Boyd started to stand up and thought better of it. "Just having a good time, that's all."
Malone thought of reading his partner a lecture on the Evils of Drink, and decided against it. Boyd might remember it, and use it against him some time. Then he realized what had to be done. He went back into his own room, dialed for room service, and ordered a couple of pots of strong black coffee.
By the time a good deal of that was awash in Boyd's intestinal system, he was almost capable of rational, connected conversation. He filled himself to the eyebrows with aspirins and other remedies, and actually succeeded in getting dressed. He seemed quite proud of this feat.
"O.K.," Malone said. "Now we have to go downstairs."
"You mean outside?" Boyd said. "Into all that noise?" He winced.
"Bite the bullet," Malone said cheerfully. "Keep a stiff upper lip."
"Nonsense," Boyd said, hunting for his coat with a doleful air. "Have you ever seen anybody with a loose upper lip?"
Malone, busy with his own coat, didn't bother with a reply. He managed somehow to get Boyd downstairs and bundled into a cab. They headed for Sixty-ninth Street.
There, he made several phone calls. The first, of course, was to Burris in Washington. After that he got the New York Police Commissioner on the wire and, finding that he needed still more authority, he called the Mayor and then, by long-distance to Albany, the Governor.
But by noon he had everything straightened out. He had a plan fully worked out in his mind, and he had the authority to go ahead with it. Now, he could make his final call.
"They're completely trustworthy," Burris had told him. "Not only that, but they have a clearance for this kind of special work—we've needed them before."
"Good," Malone said.
"Not only that," Burris told him. "They're good men. Maybe among the best in their field."
So Malone made his last call, to the firm of Leibowitz & Hardin, Electronic Engineers.
Then he beckoned to Boyd.[Pg 29]
"I don't see what I've been sitting around here for, all this time," his partner complained. "I could have been home sleeping until you needed me. And—"
"I need you now," Malone said. "I want you to take over part of this plan."
Boyd nodded sourly. "Oh, all right," he said.
"Here's what I want," Malone said. "Every red 1972 Cadillac in the area is to be picked up for inspection. I don't care why—make up a reason. A general traffic check. Anything you please. You can work that end of it out with the Commissioner; he knows about it and he's willing to go along."
"Great," Boyd said. "Do you have any idea how many cars there are in a city this size?"
"Well, we don't want all of them," Malone said. "Only red 1972 Cadillacs."
"It's still a lot," Boyd said.
"If there were only three," Malone said, "we wouldn't have any problems."
"And wouldn't that be nice?" Boyd said.
"Sure," Malone said, "but it isn't true. Anyhow: I want every one of those cars checked for any oddity, no matter how small. If there's an inch-long scratch on one fender, I want to know about it. If you've got to take the cars apart, then do that."
"Me?" Boyd said. "All by myself?"
"No," Malone said. "Use your head. There'll be a team working with you. Let me explain it. Every nut, every bolt, every inch of those cars has to be examined thoroughly—got it?"
"I've got it," Boyd said, "but I don't like it. After all, Malone—"
Malone ignored him. "The Governor of New York promised his co-operation," he said, "and he said he'd get in touch with the Governors of New Jersey and Connecticut and get co-operation from that angle. So we'll have state and local police working with us."
"That's a help," Boyd said. "We'll make such a happy team of workmen. Singing as we pull the cars apart through the long day and night and ... listen, Malone, when do you want reports on this?"
"Yesterday," Malone said.
Boyd's eyebrows raised, then lowered. "Great," he said dully.
"I don't care how you get the cars," Malone said. "If you've got to, condemn 'em. But get every last one of them. And bring them over to Leibowitz & Hardin for a complete checkup. I'll give you the address."
"Thanks," Boyd said.
"Not at all," Malone said. "Glad to be of help. And don't worry; I'll have other work to do." He paused, and then went on: "I talked to Dr. Isaac Leibowitz, he's the head of the firm out there—and he says...."
"Wait a minute," Boyd said.
"What?"
"You mean I don't have to take the cars apart myself? You mean this Leibowitz & Hardin, or whatever it is, will do it for me?"
"Of course," Malone said wearily.[Pg 30] "You re not an auto technician or an electronics man. You're an agent of the FBI."
"I was beginning to wonder," Boyd said. "After all."
"Anyhow," Malone said doggedly, "I talked to Leibowitz, and he says he can give a car a complete check in about six hours, normally."[Pg 31]
"Six hours?" Boyd stared. "That's going to take forever," he said.
"Well, he can set up a kind of assembly-line process and turn out a car every fifteen minutes. Any better?"
Boyd nodded.
"Good," Malone said. "There can't be so many 1972 red Cadillacs in the area that we can't get through them all at that speed." He thought a minute and then added: "By the way, you might check with the Cadillac dealers around town, and find out just how many there are, sold to people living in the area."
"And while I'm doing all that," Boyd said, "what are you going to be doing?"
Malone looked at him and sighed. "I'll worry about that," he said. "Just get started."
"Suppose Leibowitz can't find anything?" Boyd said.
"If Leibowitz can't find it, it's not there," Malone said. "He can find electronic devices anywhere in any car made, he says—even if they're printed circuits hidden under the paint job."
"Pretty good," Boyd said. "But suppose he doesn't?"
"Then they aren't there," Malone said, "and we'll have to think of something else." He considered that. It sounded fine. Only he wished he knew what else there was to think of.
Well, that was just pessimism. Leibowitz would find something, and the case would be over, and he could go back to Washington and rest. In August he was going to have his vacation, anyway, and August wasn't very far away.
Malone put a smile carefully on his face and told Boyd: "Get going." He slammed his hat on his head.
Wincing, he took it off and replaced it gently. The bottle of pills was still in his pocket, but he wasn't due for another one just yet.
He had time to go over to the precinct station in the West Eighties first.
He headed outside to get another taxi.
V.The door didn't say anything at all except "Lt. P. Lynch." Malone looked at it for a couple of seconds. He'd asked the Desk Sergeant for Lynch, shown his credentials and been directed up a set of stairs and around a hall. But he still didn't know what Lynch did, who he was, or what his name was doing in the little black notebook.
Well, he told himself, there was only one way to find out.
He opened the door.
The room was small and dark. It had a single desk in it, and three chairs, and a hatrack. There wasn't any coat or hat on the hatrack, and there was nobody in the chairs. In a fourth chair, behind the desk, a huskily-built man sat. He had steel-gray hair, a hard jaw and, Malone noticed with surprise, a faint twinkle in his eye.
"Lieutenant Lynch?" Malone said.
"Right," Lynch said. "What's the trouble?"[Pg 32]
"I'm Kenneth J. Malone," Malone said. "FBI." He reached for his wallet and found it. He flipped it open for Lynch, who stared at it for what seemed a long, long time and then burst into laughter.
"What's so funny?" Malone asked.
Lynch laughed some more.
"Oh, come on," Malone said bitterly. "After all, there's no reason to treat an FBI agent like some kind of a—"
"FBI agent?" Lynch said. "Listen, buster, this is the funniest gag I've seen since I came on the Force. Who told you to pull it? Jablonski downstairs? Or one of the boys on the beat? I know those beat patrolmen, always on the lookout for a new joke. But this tops 'em all. This is the—"
"You're a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said tartly.
"A what?" Lynch said. "I'm not Irish."
"You talk like an Irishman," Malone said.
"I know it," Lynch said, and shrugged. "Around some precincts, you sort of pick it up. When all the other cops are ... hey, listen. How'd we get to talking about me?"
"I said you were a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said.
"I was a—what?"
"Disgrace." Malone looked carefully at Lynch. In a fight, he considered, he might get in a lucky punch that would kill Malone. Otherwise, Malone didn't have a thing to worry about except a few months of hospitalization.
Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down at Malone's wallet again and started to laugh.
"What's so funny?" Malone demanded.
He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, he realized what had happened. He had not flipped it open to his badge at all. He'd flipped it open, instead, to a card in the card-case:
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE
PRESENTS THAT Sir Kenneth
Malone, Knight, is hereby formally
installed with the title of
KNIGHT OF THE BATH
and this card shall signify his right
to that title and his high and respected
position as officer in and of
THE QUEENS OWN F.B.I.
In a very small voice, Malone said: "There's been a terrible mistake."
"Mistake?" Lynch said.
Malone flipped the wallet open to his FBI shield. Lynch gave it a good long examination, peering at it from every angle and holding it up to the light two or three times. He even wet his thumb and rubbed at the badge with it. At last he looked up.
"I guess you are the FBI," he said. "But what was with the gag?"
"It wasn't a gag," Malone said. "It's just—" He thought of the little old lady in Yucca Flats, the little old lady who had been the prime mover in the last case he and Boyd had worked on together. Without the little old lady, the case might never have been solved—she was an authen[Pg 33]tic telepath, about the best that had ever been found.
But with her, Boyd and Malone had had enough troubles. Besides being a telepath, she was quite thoroughly insane. She had one fixed delusion: she believed she was Queen Elizabeth I.
She was still at Yucca Flats, along with the other telepaths Malone's investigation had turned up. And she still believed, quite calmly, that she was Good Queen Bess. Malone had been knighted by her during the course of the investigation. This new honor had come to him through the mail; apparently she had decided to ennoble some of her friends still further.
Malone made a note mentally to ask Boyd if he'd received one. After all, there couldn't be too
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