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completely fair one must admit the Government as yet did not know about the honesty. That was a hot one, Packer told himself. An honest Government! And it would serve those stinkers right! He could see the looks upon their faces. He gave up the business of the tie and sat down on the bed and shook for minutes with rumbling belly laughter. At last he wiped the tears out of his eyes and finished with the tie. Tomorrow morning, bright and early, he'd get in touch with Griffin and arrange the package deal for the stamp material. He'd act greedy and drive a hard bargain and then, in the end, pay a bit more than the price agreed upon for a long-term arrangement. An honest Government, he told himself, would be too honest to rescind such an agreement even if, in the light of its new honesty, it should realize the wrongness of it. For, happily, one of the tenets of honesty was to stay stuck with a bad bargain, no matter how arrived at. He shucked into his jacket and went into the living room. He stopped at the desk and opened the drawer. Reaching in, he lifted the lid of the box of leaf. He took a pinch and had it halfway to his mouth when the thought struck him suddenly and he stood for a moment frozen while all the gears came together, meshing, and the pieces fell into a pattern and he knew, without even asking, why he was the only genuine dishonest man left on the entire Earth. _I profetick and wach ahed for you!_ He put the leaf into his mouth and felt the comfort of it. _Antidote_, he thought, and knew that he was right. But how could Pug have known - how could he have foreseen the long, twisting tangle of many circumstances which must inevitably crystallize into this very moment? _Leg. forst.?_ He closed the lid of the box and shut the drawer and turned toward the door. The only dishonest man in the world, he thought. Immune to the honesty factor in the yellow spores because of the resistance built up within him by his long use of the leaf. He had set a trap tonight to victimize Pickering and tomorrow he'd go out and fox the Government and there was no telling where he'd go from there. Hazlitt had said something about taking over the entire planet and the idea was not a bad one if he could only squeeze out the necessary time. He chuckled at the thought of how all the honest suckers would stand innocently in line, unable to do a thing about it - all fair prey to the one dishonest man in the entire world. A wolf among the sheep! He drew himself erect and pulled the white gloves on carefully. He flicked his walking stick. Then he thumped himself on the chest - just once - and let himself out into the hall. He did not bother to lock the door behind him. In the lobby, as he stepped out of the elevator, he saw the Widow Foshay coming in the door. She turned and called back cheerfully to friends who had brought her home. He lifted his hat to her with an olden courtesy that he thought he had forgotten. She threw up her hands in mock surprise. "Mr. Packer," she cried, "what has come over you? Where do you think you're going at this time of night, when all honest people are abed?" "Minerva," he told her gravely, "I was about to take a stroll. I wonder if you might come along with me?" She hesitated for an instant, just long enough to give the desired small show of reluctance and indecision. He whuffled out his moustache at her. "Besides," he said, "I am not an honest person." He offered her his arm with distinguished gallantry. Clifford D.Simak. All the traps of Earth ------------------------------------------------------------------------ © Copyright 1960 Clifford D.Simak Prepared by: Anada Sucka, August 12, 1999 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ THE INVENTORY list was long. On its many pages, in his small and precise script, he had listed furniture, paintings, china, silverware and all the rest of it - all the personal belongings that had been accumulated by the Barringtons through a long family history. And now that he had reached the end of it, he noted down himself, the last item of them all: One domestic robot, Richard Daniel, antiquated but in good repair. He laid the pen aside and shuffled all the inventory sheets together and stacked them in good order, putting a paper weight upon them - the [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ] |