Michael Coney - Grim Reaper.pdf

(53 KB) Pobierz
377027055 UNPDF
MICHAEL CONEY
BULLDOG DRUMMOND AND THE GRIM REAPER
BOBBIE AXFORD AND THE raccoon eyed each other, separated by the thickness of
her
office window.
There was an uncanny glint in the raccoon's eyes.
It was a cunning glint, a knowing glint, a glint that stripped her naked. It
was
the kind of glint she used to see in the eyes of her ex-partner, ex-lover
Bill,
the treacherous rat.
"Get the hell off that ledge!" she shouted. She smacked at the glass with a
rolled-up paper. The animal stood its ground, sure-footed, hairy,
blackish-gray,
hump-backed. The office was six floors up. In the old days she'd have been
able
to open the window, and with one quick shove the disgusting brute would have
been history. But city windows didn't open nowadays.
Odd that the raccoon should have climbed up all this way. Curiosity? Death
wish?
The ceaseless quest for sexual fulfillment? Well, he wouldn't find much of the
latter up here. The huge Axford Proximation Building contained many unusual
things, but nothing resembling a female raccoon.
Funny that she should assume the thing was male. It was the eyes that did it.
That lecherous gleam.
Enough of speculation. Time was of the essence, with the Harrods Christmas
promotion coming up. Axford Proximation had rented a lot of space and she
needed
to develop a new and excitingproximation quest to wow the consumers. Casting a
final suspicious glance at the raccoon, she returned to the business of
guiding
Ted through the Drummond scenario.
The robot was the latest in a long line of Teds. His predecessors had all met
their doom in the giant construct that occupied most of the Axford Proximation
building, which in turn sprawled over ten city blocks. Bobbie's staff primed
the
construct with perils, aids to survival and prizes, the computer set the
parameters for the quest, and she led Ted through the construct's multiplicity
of alternate pathways, checking out the quest's viability and recording the
results on the master. The construct was known to the staff as the Grim
Reaper.
Death lurked around every corner.
At this moment the monitor showed Ted, currently playing the role of Captain
Hugh "Bulldog" Drummond, standing in a tiny chamber. His rechargeable
flashlight
was playing over bright and featureless metallic walls, ceiling and floor.
There
was no obvious way out, but then there never was. It looked as though Carl
 
Peterson, diabolical mastermind, had beaten him at last.
Ted, who was nothing if not sophisticated, felt a flicker of fear. Bobbie
checked that the fear had been successfully recorded onto the master.
Vicarious
emotion was a recent achievement in proximation, and was going to be a big
selling feature at Harrods.
Next, she considered Ted's alternatives. The tiny oxygen vial could be useful;
the chamber might shortly be filled with gas, water or whatever. Forget the
plastic explosive; certainly it would blow a hole in those walls, but it would
do the same to Ted.
She had to come to a decision soon, otherwise Ted would do it himself. And
Ted,
though sophisticated, did not always decide right.
And that reminded her of Bill Kilpatrick, who could never come to a decision
about anything, except for the day he walked out on her and Axford
Proximation.
Bill was a vacillating ninny and she was better off without him.
Somewhere beyond the chamber walls came a muffled whir, and a terrified
screaming from Ted recalled her to the task. She'd have to edit that out;
Drummond would never have screamed in that cowardly manner. The robot's
flashlight showed that the chamber was getting smaller. The walls were closing
in, slowly but relentlessly. Neat idea. Now, what would a man like Drummond do
in such a situation? She took a mental inventory of available aids to
survival.
Meanwhile Ted had drawn his laser pistol, a bad mistake. His first shot
criss-crossed the chamber with deadly reflections, finally striking Ted
himself,
fortunately at much reduced power.
"You all right, Bobbie?" It was Rupert, her personal assistant, smoothing down
his hair. Rupert was a good-looking bastard and knew it. He'd actually used a
hologram of himself as a prize for a female quest. It had sold depressingly
well. "I thought I heard someone screaming," said Rupert.
"That was Ted. He's in a jam. He's a good screamer."
"Did you know there's a raccoon outside the window?"
She turned to consider the creature thoughtfully, all business. "Think we can
use him? Are raccoons, uh, deadly in any way?"
"They can carry rabies, I believe."
"Have we used rabies?"
"We have rabid bats and rabid dogs in the Reaper. Raccoons, I don't think so.
I'll check it out." He stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders and
sliding
downward.
"Stop that," murmured Bobbie. "The raccoon will see."
"The hell with the raccoon."
"No, listen, I feel uncomfortable. There's something . . . human about the way
 
that animal looks. It reminds me of Bill. Do me a favor, Rupert. Have one of
the
staff shoot it off, will you?"
"I'll shoot it off myself. Who needs it, huh? As if the pigeons aren't
enough."
Rupert sensed rejection and his tone had turned sullen. "How is Bill, by the
way?" he asked pointedly.
"I haven't seen that weird guy in months and I don't want to." Bobbie swung
round in her chair. "Why do you ask?" She eyed him closely. There was
something
about Rupert she didn't quite trust. Were his eyes actually shifty or did they
simply dart about alertly, the way a good personal assistant's should?
"I happened to run into his manager Slim Ferris yesterday. Business at Mindset
Visions is brisk, he told me. They've rented space at Harrods too. Ironic,
isn't
it?" Rupert's eyes shifted, or darted.
"What's ironic?
"You and Bill, I mean. You used to be partners here, now you're running rival
businesses."
"We're not rivals." Angrily, Bobbie swung back to face the screen. What in
God's
name was Ted doing with that spray can in there? "Mindset Visions is in an
entirely different line of business."
"Yet their sales go up as ours go down."
"Lots of things go up as our sales go down." But she was worried. Was
proximation going out of style? Were people tiring of armchair adventures?
"Tastes change," said Rupert, echoing her thoughts. "People change, too.
Remember 'Calves' Stilton?"
Bobbie remembered all too well. H.K. "Calves" Stilton was a legend at Axford
Proximation. A man of mighty physique, he'd been their most inventive
programmer
until, working on a difficult detail of the Drummond quest, he'd gone berserk.
"The hell with all this pretense," he'd reportedly shouted, "life's too
short!"
And he'd shattered the screen of his monitor with one kick of his oaken legs,
hauled open the steel door normally used only by Ted, and stridden into the
Grim
Reaper personally.
They'd followed his progress on the monitors for a while, as he overcame peril
after peril with muscular expertise and lightning reactions, until they lost
him
in a new scenario where eyespies had not yet been installed. When Bobbie left
the office that evening, "Calves" was still in there, presumably battling Carl
Peterson, the diabolical mastermind.
The story was taken up by Bill Kilpatrick, working late. Apparently "Calves"
had
emerged triumphant from the Reaper in the small hours, handed in his notice
and
 
gone home carrying his prize, a holographic reproduction of Miss Nude Earth
2024. It was later reported that he'd gone through a form of marriage with
her;
subsequently the couple had emigrated to Altair IV where they'd lived happily
ever since.
Such was the legend of H.K. "Calves" Stilton, the only human ever to have
walked
the deadly corridors of the Grim Reaper.
" 'Calves' was crazy," said Bobbie. "He must have been crazy from the start
but
we didn't spot it. Programmers are odd people. 'Calves' cost us two years'
work
on the Drummond quest. You'd think he'd have given us all the details of the
program before he took off for Altair IV in that irresponsible manner. It's
his
fault we're having to run Ted through the quest." She sighed. "My God, I wish
everyone was like Ted. I know where I am with Ted. He's simple, and he's
rational."
"If that's the case," Rupert pointed out nastily, "why is he spraying the
walls
of that chamber with shark repellent?"
When Bobbie Axford described Bill Kilpatrick as weird, she was thinking of his
disdain for material success and the wealth that came with it. Wealth, in
Bill's
books, stank. He blamed it for the break-up with Bobbie. To a certain extent
he
was right, but he didn't realize another factor was Bobbie's pride. She'd
founded Axford Proximation and it had prospered hugely, then he'd come along
and
tried to get her to change direction. And the subsequent success of Mindset
Visions suggested that he'd been right.
At the moment when Ted's metallic finger was squeezing the button on the can
of
shark repellent, Bill was sitting in the sordid living room of his tumble-down
cottage at Foss Creek, a village with few amenities some thirty kilometers
from
the city, populated by dropouts and idealists.
It says much for Bill's strength of character that he'd maintained his squalid
lifestyle despite the huge success of Mindset Visions, the business he'd
started
after leaving Axford Proximation two years ago. Bill was no fool. He'd taken
the
precaution of hiring Slim Ferris as General Manager andgiving him a free hand.
Slim's curriculum vitae included ten years for embezzlement of charity funds.
Bill was confident that he, Slim, would ensure that he, Bill, could continue
to
live in the manner to which he was accustomed.
And now Bill, in his slovenly living room, was wearing the patented headset
that
represented one-half of his great invention.
The other half was implanted in the brain of his raccoon, McArthur.
 
Through the eyes of McArthur, Bill watched Bobbie sitting at her monitor. He
watched the entry of Rupert the secretary, saw him pawing Bobbie, and his
blood
boiled. He couldn't hear what they were saying, the window was too thick. Then
he saw Rupert stride purposefully from the room, and shortly afterward
McArthur's instincts for self-preservation overrode Bill's power of
suggestion.
A section of ledge beside McArthur's right paw exploded and the raccoon
bolted.
Whirling impressions of white concrete and blue downspouts bypassed Bill's
optic
nerve and registered directly on the visual center of his brain. Fear caused
his
heart to race: like proximation, the mindsets supplied vicarious emotion.
Finally the images steadied up, showing dark and ancient brickwork, damp grass
and dead leaves. McAnhur had gone to ground. The images faded. His faithful
companion was unconscious, maybe dead.
Bill tried to come to a decision, always a difficult task. Should he ride
boldly
to McArthur's rescue, and risk a confrontation with Bobbie? Or should he sit
tight and keep quiet? No, he couldn't let McArthur rot. He and the raccoon had
been through many adventures together. At least he should recover the body and
give it a decent burial.
But when he arrived at the Axford Proximation he found it was not going to be
so
simple. Several police stood beside their vehicles, scanning the bushes with
infra-red detectors. His heart leaped at the sight of Bobbie, looking
beautiful,
chatting to the officer in charge.
"What's going on?" he asked.
She favored him with the kind of glance he'd seen her use on McArthur. "Some
busybody reported seeing laser fire."
"It is an offense to discharge a firearm within the city dome," explained the
officer sententiously.
"I told you," replied Bobbie patiently, "it was probably a reflection from
inside the building. We use all kinds of weapons in there. Anything my staff
can
dream up, we use it. We can simulate a nuclear holocaust if we want to. Your
witness may have seen one. We have the necessary permits, if that's what
you're
worried about."
In the end the police departed, muttering, and Bobbie swung round on Bill.
"What
are you doing here, anyway?"
"I just came to pick up McArthur."
"Who the hell is McArthur?"
Bobbie was looking suspicious. Circumstantial evidence was required. "Just an
ordinary guy, Winston McArthur, about one-eighty pounds. Salt of the earth.
Lost
a leg in a boating accident, poor fellow. Insurance wouldn't pay up for a
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin