Gordon Dickson - The Stranger

VIP免费

2024-12-08 0 0 408.51KB 190 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events

portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resem-

blance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

THE STRANGER

book or portions thereof in any form.

First printing: March 1987

A TOR Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

49 West 24 Street

New York, N.Y. 10010

Cover art by David Lee Anderson

ISBN: 0-812-53579-0

CAN. ED.: 0-812-53580-4

Printed in the United States of America

0987654321

Acknowledgments

lications International, Ltd.

Publications, Inc.

Dickson.

Gordon R. Dickson.

don R. Dickson.

R. Dickson.

Publications, Inc.

Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.

Gordon R. Dickson.

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (1 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

don R. Dickson.

don R. Dickson-

Digest Productions Corp.

Publications, Inc.

Contents

God Bless Them

James

E Gubling Dow

The Stranger

The Friendly Man

MX Knows Best

The Quarry

3-Part Puzzle -

IT, Out of Darkest Jungle

The Green Building

Tempus Non Fugit

Cloak and Stagger

And Then There Was Peace

The Catch

God Bless Them

"Nobody in Congress or the federal government

or the public has put forward a case for a U.S.

manned Mars Mission," Press said in an inter-

view. "And if the Soviets decide to spend $70

billion to land men on Mars in five years, we

say: God bless them."

—Los Angeles TimesYreprinted in the Minne-

apolis Star. Thursday, October 12, 1978

—(from an interview with Frank Press, sci-

ence adviser to U.S. President James Car-

ter and chairman of the presidential review

committee whose four-month study formed

the basis for Carter's policy statement on

the space effort.)

There was no mail at the Main Minneapolis Post

Office for Merlin Swenson. Almost no one got

any mail at General Delivery on Mondays now. But

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (2 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

people went there, anyway, although lately the air

conditioning was always off.

Merlin left the post office and walked slowly the

twenty-seven blocks to the slave market. It was a

Gordon R. Dickson

blue-bright July morning, already turning hot, and

he could feel the heat of the sidewalk through the

thin soles of his shoes. At Twelfth Avenue and Third

Street, he stepped on something hard and stopped in

a panic to check the sole of the right shoe. But what-

ever it was, he discovered, standing on one foot, had

not gone through—although the sole was now like

soft cardboard and gave at a touch.

He started walking again. The shoes would be too

expensive for him to replace, these days, and there

was no hope of getting any worthwhile work without

them. When the soles finally wore through there would

be several things he could do to patch them, tempo-

rarily, but it would be the beginning of the end. And

it was inevitable that they would wear through. Any

day now.

In the narrow waiting room of the slave market,

the hard, upright chairs along the walls were all

filled. The air conditioning, roaring from the ventila-

tor grills, barely removed the stink of unwashed bod-

ies. Merlin, himself, was clean this morning. It had

cost him, but this was a special day.

"You planning to work dressed like that?" asked

the hiring clerk behind the desk. His narrow, white

face, under an upright shock of brown hair, was

pinched by an expression of habitual annoyance.

"I am if you can get me something clean for half a

day," Merlin said. In the mirror tile behind the clerk's

desk he saw his own face, square, large-boned, trained

now to show no expression at all. "I've got an engi-

neering job interview this afternoon."

"Oh?" said the clerk, staring at his computer screen.

He punched the keys of the terminal. "All right. You're

on the half-day list. I can tell you right now there's

not much chance."

"I could manage another ten percent," Merlin said.

The clerk's shrug told the true story. It was too

GOD BLESS THEM 11

much to expect a clean job somewhere for just half a

day. Still, the chance could'not be passed up. Money

was everything.

Merlin waited for a chair; then, sitting, he tried to

rest with his eyes open. You could lose your connec-

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (3 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

tion with a place like this if they caught you drop-

ping off—that explained the hard chairs and the icy

air conditioning. Everybody wanted a safe place to

sleep. But this was the best of the slave markets.

They were honest and made a specialty of hiring

people who had degrees. The Qualified Laborer is a

Conscientious Laborer was their slogan. Merlin drifted

into a mindless period hearing nothing until the man

next to him began reading aloud from a morning

newspaper.

" "All hope of possible U.N. assistance for the U.S.

economy seemed doomed today in light of comment

by the Soviet Representative, Anatoly Pirapich, that

this country had historically refused to fund its space

program adequately and that aid now to U.S. orbital

industries, in particular, would be an open invitation

to impoverished nations to-rely on other countries

for large investment capital.

" 'Pirapich read aloud in session a 1978 quote from

the Los Angeles Times, reprinted in the Minneapolis

Star on October twelfth of that year:

"The While House statement says America's civil

space policy centers on these tenets: that activities will

reflect a balanced strategy of application, science and

technology development ... it is neither feasible nor

necessary at this time to commit the U.S. to a high-

challenge space engineering initiative comparable to

Apollo ..."'"

The man stopped reading, folded his paper and

turned to Merlin.

"Can you imagine that?" he said. "Just fifteen years

ago, a White House statement says that. What were

they using for brains?"

Gordon R. Dickson

"What good does it do to keep re-reading that sort

of thing?" Merlin said dully. "It doesn't change

anything."

"But how could anyone be so blind?"

It was a trite question. Merlin felt no urge to an-

swer, but he was not surprised to hear it asked.

Although probably his own age, the other man had

the kind of appearance that made him seem barely

out of adolescence. Curly black hair, slight body,

pale face—an innocent in a time when innocents got

eaten for breakfast. Merlin had never seen him before.

"Does it matter now?" Merlin finally said.

"There'd still be a chance for this country if . . ."

The other broke off. "Oh, my name's Sam Church.

My degree's in electronics. How about you?"

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (4 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

"Flow mechanics, gravityless."

"Gravityless? You must really have thought you'd

make it with an off-world job. But don't you know

you shouldn't wear good clothes for this kind of place?

No telling what kind of work they'll offer you."

The assumption of experience by someone obvi-

ously new here irritated Merlin enough to rouse him

from the chronic fatigue he shared with most adults

nowadays.

"I'm dressed like this because I've got a job inter-

view this afternoon," he said. "In my own field."

He was sorry he had mentioned it, the moment the

words were out of his mouth. Sam Church's pale face

was suddenly wiped naked of pretension; it was now

desperate with longing.

"Oh, God!" Church breathed. "You really have an

interview?"

"I've been waiting nine months," Merlin said gruffly.

He was sorry now he had talked to this man at all.

Luckily, Church seemed to be the only one who had

heard his mention of a professional job interview.

They were all in the same straits. Church lowered his

voice.

GOD BLESS THEM 13

"Where? Who with?"

"International Positions," Merlin said. "One o'clock."

"God!" said Church again. He sniffed the air. "You

took a shower, too."

Merlin's small, bitter laugh caught in his throat.

"Not damn likely!" he said. "I used the washbasin

on my crash floor, and it cost me three hundred for

five minutes. My own soap and towel, and a hundred

to hire somebody to stand guard."

Church's attitude had changed. He was now ut-

terly the awestruck neophyte looking at an old hand.

"You're office-crashing?" he said. "How dangerous

is it?"

"If you know what you're doing, it's workable,"

Merlin said.

"You carry a knife?"

"Of course." Merlin felt trapped by the conversa-

tion but unable to think of a way to change the

subject. "That doesn't mean much. There's always

someone around who's better with a knife. The real

trick is knowing who's sharing the office with you,

and all of you take turns on watch. You've got to

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (5 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

know how to wheel and deal'with the hall-patrol

guards, too."

Church breathed out softly. He looked enviously at

Merlin's large frame.

"I couldn't do it," he said.

Merlin looked at him. He was quite ready to be-

lieve that the other could not do it, would not be able

to survive in one of the empty office buildings that

had been converted to dormitories. Only the fittest

survived very long.

"Where do you live?" he asked, to change the

subject.

"I've only been married five months. My wife and

I, we've got a room with my in-laws."

"Wife . . ." Merlin caught himself just in time. He

Gordon R. Dickson

had had a sudden, unbearably poignant, vision of

someone to go home to, only one other person and a

room where you could be alone, just the two of you.

"You're married too?" Church asked.

"Yes. She's on the west coast."

"Oh."

Church did not make the mistake of asking more

than that—there were limits even to his innocence,

apparently. Many families had been split by the gal-

loping inflation and the lack of jobs.

"Do you hear from her much?" Church asked.

"No."

The monosyllable finally stopped Church's ques-

tioning. They sat a while longer in silence; then,

glancing at the clock. Merlin saw that it was almost

noon. His mindless period had lasted longer than it

seemed. He stood up, went over to the desk and told

the clerk he was checking out.

"Right." The clerk punched keys on his computer

terminal, not looking up. As he turned away from the

desk, Merlin bumped into Church, also on his feet.

"I haven't gotten anything all morning here, ei-

ther," said Church. "Do you mind if I walk along

with you?"

"Yes," said Merlin-

Church blinked. "Yes? You do mind?"

"That's right. No company."

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (6 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

"Oh." Church fell back. Merlin turned and went

past him and out the door into midday heat that was

now like radiation from the hearth of a blast furnace.

He walked back the way he had come, downtown

toward the International Trade Center. On the way

he stopped at a discount market and bought a quarter-

liter foil package of uncooked Quaker Oats for eigh-

teen dollars. A smal! detour took him to Aimsbury

Park, where he ripped open the package and ate the

dry oats by the handful, washing them down with

GOD BLESS THEM 15

water from a public fountain. The oat flakes, under

their dustiness, had an aimost nutty taste. They were

the most food available for the money, and he felt

better with something in his stomach. "Courage is

food; food is courage." Someone had told him that

when he was young.

It was nearly one o'clock. He went on to the Inter-

national Trade Center, to the office of International

Positions, and gave his name to the receptionist-

"Oh, yes." She checked her computer screen. "Mr.

Ghosh will see you. Just a few minutes ... if you'll

sit down."

It was, of course, more than just a few minutes.

His mouth began to feel dry from the oat flakes, and

he got to his feet.

"Would I have time to find a drinking fountain?"

he asked.

"I'm sure you will." She smiled at him. She was

thin, in her forties, and in spite of having a steady

job, she seemed prey to inner anxiety. "There's one

just outside, to your left."

He went out through the "glass door and found the

fountain. After drinking, as he straightened up, he

heard a throat cleared behind him. He turned to see

Church standing there.

"I hope you don't mind," Church said. "I just wanted

to see how you'd come out ..."

Under his immediate irritation, something he

thought he had long since repressed, something

dangerous—sympathy for another human being—

stirred in Merlin. Church was so helpless, so inoffen-

sive, it was impossible not to feel sorry for him.

"All right," said Merlin. "But don't hang around

here. Wait for me outside and I'll tell you about it

when I leave."

"Thanks." said Church, looking up at him. "Really.

I mean thanks!"

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (7 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

Gordon R. Dickson

"I'm not doing anything special for you," said Mer-

lin. He went back into the office.

"Oh, good. There you are," said the receptionist as

he stepped through the door. "Hurry! Mr. Ghosh is

waiting for you. Straight ahead and to your right!"

Merlin hurried into the corridor beyond her desk

and found his way to the open doorway of a wide

room, brightly lit by a wall-wide window. The room

was pleasant with air conditioning and the green of

potted plants. Behind a wood-and-chrome desk sat a

dark-skinned man in his forties, wearing a chalk-

striped blue suit—the value of which would have

given Meriin financial security for a year. Ram Ghosh,

said the nameplate on his desk. But his eyes were not

unkind, and he did not exhibit the condescension,

the air of veiled exasperation and impatience with

Americans, that so many foreigners showed these

days.

"Mr. Swenson? Sit down, please." Ram Ghosh's

English was almost accentiess, with only a slight

prolongation of the vowels. Merlin took a chair. Ghosh

tapped the papers on his desk with the nail of an

index finger.

"Six months," he said. "You've waited a long time

for a job offer from us."

"Lots of people wait longer," Merlin said. Ghosh

smiled at him, a little sadly.

"Yes . . ." he said. He became more brisk. "Well,

the matter at hand is that you now have an offer.

Your education was in null-gravity flow mechanics, I

see. But no experience?"

"They aren't hiring many U.S. citizens to work

outside the atmosphere these days." Merlin knew his

bitterness was showing. He felt a twinge of fear at

the thought that he might already have prejudiced

the interview, but the words had come by themselves

before he could stop them. Ghosh. however, did not

seem offended.

GOD BLESS THEM 17

"Very true," he said, nodding. "But you can't blame

off-Earth installations and factories for giving first

chance to their own nationals. Many people, you

know, want to work in space these days."

As many, thought Merlin, as want to enter heaven.

"No experience," Ghosh went on. "Well, we could

wish you had. But, in this case, the fact you don't

isn't a complete barrier. I can offer you a job in your

specialty. But I warn you to treat this offer, and all

information concerned with it, as a matter of se-

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (8 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

crecy, whether you accept the job or not."

Merlin felt an icy shock that gave way to a glow of

hope so powerful that he feared it showed on his

face.

"Of course," he said, slowly and clumsiiy. "Profes-

sional confidentiality ... I understand."

"Good," said Ghosh, smiling again. "All right. The

job will be in the metals-forming group of an elec-

tronics research unit to be placed in high orbit in the

next two years. Your work would be classified and

would have to be explained to you later if you accept

the job. But it's within your-ability and education,

and you'd be paid at going rates for a space-qualified

engineer of your specialty and experience . . ."

Merlin's mind reeled. The pay rate Ghosh was talk-

ing about would make him comfortably welt off in

any other society in the world. Here in the U.S., it

would make him wealthy, by comparison with those

at the income level at which he had been living for

the last five years.

"I should say, that's what your pay rate would be

once you were in orbit and on the job," Ghosh con-

tinued. "During your training period, here on the

surface, you'd be paid at a standby rate of half your

space-borne pay. Should you accept . . ."

In a euphoric daze, Merlin found himself signing

papers, shaking Ghosh's hand and receiving congrat-

18 Gordon R. Dickson

illations as a new employee of something called Trans-

Space Electronics.

"You'll report to the training center in Huntsville,

Utah," Ghosh said. "The receptionist outside has all

the necessary information, transportation vouchers

and the rest . . ." He coughed. "If you could use an

advance on your first month's wages . . ."

"I ... ves," Merlin said. He had been so over-

whelmed by good fortune that he had completely

forgotten he would need decent clothes, luggage, a

dozen other things he had once taken for granted but

no longer owned.

"My secretary can give you a check for up to a

third of your first pay period's wages."

"Thank you," said Merlin. "I don't know how to

thank you."

"Not at all." Ghosh smiled. "I must admit I like

this job. I've had less happy ones. If you know of

anyone else whom you think might work out for us ..."

"I'm afraid not," Merlin said quickly. The hard

years had taught him not to recommend anyone.

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (9 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt

There was too much risk; the other person's actions

might recoil against one's own record. Life had be-

come too brutal for casual favors.

They shook hands and Merlin went out. With the

advance check and other materials in hand, he stepped

back out into the lobby of the Trade Building. For a

moment he hesitated, his mind whirling, unable to

think of what to do first.

He turned toward the drinking fountain. The cold

water tasted like expensive wine. Then he saw Church.

"I got the job," said Merlin.

"God!" said Church.

"Engineering, in my specialty," said Merlin- "Half-

pay at the trainee level until I go into space, then full

pay."

Church said nothing, but there was a look on his

GOD BLESS THEM 19

face—one of incredulity and envy and disbelief, all

mixed.

And it was a look that touched Merlin's inner core.

In this moment of incredible happiness, he saw him-

self standing where Church was, hearing of someone

else's good fortune. He knew too well what the other

must be feeling. Impulsively, he spoke.

"You've got an electronics degree, you said?"

Church nodded, his face suddenly wary.

"Go in there right now," said Merlin. "You may be

able to get hired yourself. Tell the secretary you

heard about it at the post office—anything. Just don't

tell them I sent you. The name of the outfit is Trans-

Space Electronics. Remember, you didn't hear about

it from me."

Church stared as if he had just heard some un-

known language. Then his eyes opened wide. He spun

on his heel, ran to the entrance of the offices and let

himself in.

Merlin departed, clutching his check and the other

papers.

His transportation vouchers got him on the eve-

ning flight to Salt Lake City. He boarded carrying a

new suitcase with nothing but his old clothes and

shoes in it. After being so poor for so long, he found

he could not bring himself to throw things away.

It was only the first of his conflicts with the uncon-

scious habits of near-starvation. When he got to the

training camp at Huntsville, he found the Reception

Center closed for the day and only the thought of the

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txt (10 of 190) [10/16/2004 4:39:05 PM]

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

file:///G|/Program%20Files/eMule/Incoming/Gordon%20%20Dickson%20-%20The%20Stranger.txtThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictional,andanyresem-blancetorealpeopleorincidentsispurelycoincidental.THESTRANGERCopyright©1987byGordonR.DicksonAllrightsreserved,includingther...

展开>> 收起<<

Gordon Dickson - The Stranger.pdf

共190页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Gordon Dickson - The Stranger

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: