The Cosmic Computer H. Beam Piper (reader novel txt) đ
- Author: H. Beam Piper
Book online «The Cosmic Computer H. Beam Piper (reader novel txt) đ». Author H. Beam Piper
âWhat are you?â
âVice-president in charge of operations. Thatâs what I spent all yesterday logrolling, baby-kissing and cigar-passing to get.â
âAnd what am I, if itâs a fair question?â
âYou have a very distinguished position; you are a non-office-holding stockholder. The only other one is Judge Ledue; as a member of the judiciary, he did not feel it proper to accept official position in a private corporation. Tom Brangwynâs Chief of Company Police; Klem Fawzi is Commander of the Company Guards. And we have a law firm in Storisende lined up to handle our charter application. Sterber, Flynn & Chen-Wong. Sterberâs married to Jake Vyckhovenâs sister, Flynnâs son is married to the daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury, and Chen-Wong is a nephew of the Chief Justice. All of them are directly descended from members of Genji Gartnerâs original crew.â
âYou donât anticipate any trouble about getting the charter?â
âNot exactly. And Lester Dawes is in Storisende now, trying to find us a contragravity ship. There are about a dozen in the hands of receivers for bankrupt shipping companies; he might find one thatâs still airworthy. Oh; you remember how I insisted on absolute secrecy about our Merlin objective? Thatâs working out better than my fondest expectations. Itâs leaking like a machine-gunned water tank, and everybody it leaks to is positive that we know exactly where Merlin is or we wouldnât be trying to keep it a secret.â
Three days later, Conn hitched a ride on a freight-scow to Litchfield. From the air, he could see a haze of bonfire smoke over High Garden Terrace, and a gang of men at work. There were more men at work on the Mall and along the streets on either side. He went up from the yard below the house, where the scow was being unloaded, and found his mother in the living room watching a screen play with one eye and keeping the other on a soulless machine like a miniature contragravity tank, which was going over the carpet with a vacuum cleaner and taking swipes at the furniture with a rotary dustmop. She was glad to see him, and then became troubled.
âConn, when Flora comes home, you wonât argue with her, will you?â
âOnly in self-defense.â That was the wrong thing to say. He changed it to, âNo; I wonât argue with her at all,â and then quoted Wade Lucas quoting Thomas Paine. Then he had to assure his mother a couple of times that there really was a Merlin, and then assure her that it wouldnât get loose and hurt anybody if he did find it.
In the middle of his assurances about the harmlessness of Merlin, the housecleaning-robot began knocking things off the top of a table.
âOscar! You stop that!â his mother yelled.
Oscar, deaf as the adder, kept on. Conn yelled at his mother to use her control; she remembered that she had one, a thing like an old-fashioned pocket watch, around her neck on a chain, and got the robot stopped.
No wonder she was afraid of Merlin.
He took advantage of the interruption to get to his room and change clothes, then went up to the hangar and got out an air-cavalry mount. About fifty men were working on High Garden Terrace, pruning and trimming and leveling the lawns. There was a big vitrifier on the Mallâ âeven at five hundred feet he could feel the heat from itâ âchuffing and clanking and pouring lavalike molten rock for a new pavement. And all the nymphs and satyrs and dryads and fauns and centaurs had had their pedestals rebuilt and were sandblasted clean.
He landed on the top of the Airlines Building and rode a lift down to the office where Kurt Fawzi neglected the affairs of his shipline agency, his brokerage business, and the city of Litchfield. The afternoon habituĂ©s had begun to gatherâ âRaymond Fitch, the used-vehicles dealer, Lorenzo Menardes, Judge Ledue, Tom Brangwyn, Klem Zareff. Fawzi was on the screen, talking to somebody with sandy hair and a suit that didnât seem to be made of any sort of Federation Armed Forces material, about warehouse facilities. The addresses they were mentioning were in Storisende.
âNo, Leo, I donât know when,â Fawzi was saying, âbut donât you worry. You just have space for it, and weâll fill it up. And donât ask me what sort of stuff. You know what a salvage operationâs like; you just haul out the stuff as you come to it.â
Tom Brangwyn, lounging in one of the deep chairs, looked up.
âHello, Conn. Weâre having a time. Another two hundred tramps came in on the Countess this morning, and Ghu only knows how many in their own vehicles, and they all seem to think if thereâs work for some there ought to be work for all, and some of them are getting nasty.â
âWe can use some more out at the dig. The ones you sent out Thursday are doing all right, once they found out we werenât taking any foolishness.â
Fawzi turned away from the screen. âWell, Conn, weâre in,â he said. âThe charter was granted this morning; now weâre Litchfield Exploration & Salvage, Ltd. And Lester Dawes has found us a contragravity ship.â
âHow much will it cost us?â
Fawzi began to laugh. âConn, thisâll slay you! She isnât costing us a centisol. You know those old ships on Mothball Row, back of the old West End ship docks at Storisende?â
Conn nodded. Heâd seen them before he had gone away, and from the City of Asgard coming inâ âa lot of old Army Transport craft, covered with muslin and sprayed with protectoplast. The Planetary Government had taken them over after the War
Comments (0)