[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.Beyond that, the dimly lit city went on forever."After you." The elevator finally stopped.Wilfred Dell had the gun in his hand again.He gestured to his armed assistants to descend in the elevator, and directed Job forward through a heavy wooden door."You will sleep up here tonight, in guest quarters.Turn around." He watched closely as Job turned to face him."How are you? Exhausted?""I've felt better.But I'm all right.""Lively enough to absorb information? If not, we'll postpone this until morning.""Try me." Job was tired, but he was taking in everything around him.Dell's office was furnished with a luxury that Job had never seen, not even in the most opulent chambers of Bracewell Mansion where only senators and congressmen were received.This room reeked of wealth: massive wooden desk, discreet recessed ceiling lights, coffee tables with delicate cups and saucers and glasses upon them, oil paintings on the walls that subtly enhanced the rest of the furnishings."You can look around some other time." Dell seemed to see and understand everything."I brought you here," he went on, "because I want you to do a job for me.To be specific, I want to send you into the Nebraska Tandy." He smiled."There.Now you're awake, right?"Job was very much awake."The Nebraska Tandy," repeated Wilfred Dell."You know the jingle?""T-A-N-D—""Not that one.That's the kiddy version.This one's a bit more grown up:"So twice ten miles of sterile ground,With walls and towers were girdled round.In Xanadu, the sky burns black.If you go in, you don't come back."How much do you know about the Great Nebraska Tandy?""Enough.I'd be better off handed over to Reginald Brook, right now.""He might send you there anyway.And if he sentenced you, you wouldn't come back.Whereas if you go for me, the whole point of your trip is that you will come back, or it's not worth your going." Dell gestured to a white chair built of strips of stout cloth and metal bars."Sit down.It's a lot more comfortable than it looks.I can see you're baffled, and you should be.Why would anyone care what's happening inside a Tandy?" He sat down behind the desk, opened a carved jade box that sat on the corner, and pushed it towards Job."Help yourself."Job glanced at the assortment inside and shook his head."I don't use any of those.""Good," Dell closed the lid."Do you use alcohol?""Not normally.I did with Stella.""I'll bet you did.But you're sober now? I have to tell you a few things.You may think you know them already, but you don't.While I was waiting for you I took a look around your place.Lots of books.Have you read any of them?""Some.Most.""So you read about the Great Crash—the Quiebra Grande?""A bit.""Then don't believe a word of it.What the books say caused the crash, that's pure fiction.They follow the official line, what the government wants you to believe.I'm going to tell you the truth."Dell paused.The lights in the room were unobtrusive, but they were four times as powerful as the bare bulbs in Job's room.Job could see the lines around Wilfred Dell's eyes, and furrows in the high brow.The baby face was deceptive.The man behind the desk was in his forties, perhaps in his fifties.And he was an enigma, a type of personality that Job had never met before."I thought that you were the government," he said."The Quiebra Grande." Dell ignored the implied question."I still lived in the city in those days, not too far from where we found you.And not much richer." He flashed Job a look."There are ways out, you know, just a few.I used to read the papers, too.I remember when it began."It was like a smelly fart at the duchess's tea party.At first, all the governments ignored it.They pretended that it didn't exist, that nothing had happened."Then things got worse.The stink became terrible, too bad to ignore.And all the governments turned and accused each other.You did it, one said, when you cut down all your forests.No, it's your fault, said the next one, you spent more money than you had, and you pulled down all the world's financial markets.But you were burning the high-sulfur coal, ruining the air.And you were fouling the oceans with your wastes.And you had the bad reactor meltdown, and quadrupled the background radioactivity."Everything was going to hell.But there's one other thing to remember about a high-class tea party: no matter what happens, the Duchess won't be blamed for the fart.And no matter who gets hurt, the Duchess herself won't suffer.In our case, the Michelsons and the Brooks and the big land-owning families were the Duchess.They were not about to lower their living standards.Other people could do that."But the Quiebra Grande was too bad to ignore.So the powers in this country and elsewhere did what rulers in trouble have done for centuries: they looked for a group to blame."And they found one, people easy to identify and too naive to defend themselves.The air was dirty and radioactive, the water was foul, the topsoil was blowing off the land.There was no money to repair roads or runways or cities, and the transportation system was collapsing.What was the common denominator of all the problems?""Technology," said Job quietly."And behind the technology, science."Wilfred Dell had not been expecting an answer.He stared at Job."You really did read those books, didn't you?"It was nice to know that Dell's records were not perfect."I did, but not until I was sixteen years old.I knew the official position long before that.A scientist told me about it when I was ten.Alan Singh.He was one of those they rounded up.I've often wondered what happened to him.""I could find out.But I hardly need to look.The Toxic And Nuclear Disposal sites started growing before the turn of the century.By the time of the Quiebra Grande there were hundreds of Tandies, all around the world.The biggest in this country is Xanadu, out in Nebraska—over twenty miles square.It holds the most toxic chemical wastes, the highest radioactivity levels.And when the scientist pogrom began, Reginald Brook and friends decided that the punishment must fit the crime.Scientists should go to the Tandies.The vast majority of them were sent to the Nebraska Tandy." Wilfred Dell smiled pleasandy at Job."So your friend Singh probably landed in Xanadu.And he is certainly long-dead."That was where Father Bonifant had been sent, uncomplaining.The assignment to the Nebraska Tandy thus carries a great responsibility, and I choose to regard it as an equally great honor
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]