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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
amount at risk.'
`Agreed. The matter?'
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
`PyrE.'
`Spell it, please.'
'The name means nothing to you?'
`No.'
`Good. It will to Dagenham. PyrE. Capital P-Y-R-Capital E. Tell Dagenham we've located the PyrE.
He's engaged to get it . . . at all costs . . . through a man named Foyle. Gulliver Foyle.' The courier
produced a tiny silver pearl, a memo-bead, repeated Presteign's instructions into it, and left without
another word.
Presteign turned to his telephone operator. ` Get me Regis Sheffield,' he directed.
Ten minutes after the call went through to Regis Sheffield's law office, a young law clerk appeared on
Presteign's private jaunte stage, was vetted and admitted through the maze. He was a bright young man
with a scrubbed face and the expression of a delighted rabbit.
`Excuse the delay, Presteign,' he said. `We got your call in Chicago and I'm still only a D class
five-hundred-miler. Took me a while getting here.'
` Is your chief trying a case in Chicago?'
`Chicago, New York and Washington. He's been on the jaunte from court to court all morning. We fill in
for him when he's in another court.'
`I want to retain him.'
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`Honored, Presteign, but Mr. Sheffield's pretty busy.'
`Not too busy for PyrE.'
`Sorry, sir; I don't quite -'
`No, you don't, but Sheffield will. Just tell him: PyrE and the amount of his fee.'
`Which is?' `Quarter of a million retainer and a quarter of a million guaranteed against ten per cent of the
total amount at risk.'
`And what performance is required of Mr. Sheffield?'
`To prepare every known legal device for kidnapping a man and holding him against the army, the navy
and the police.'
`Right. And the man?'
'Gulliver Foyle.' The law clerk muttered quick notes into a memo-bead, thrust the bead into his ear,
listened, nodded and departed. Presteign left the study and ascended the plush stairs to his daughter's
suite to pay his morning respects.
In the homes of the wealthy, the rooms of the female members were blind, without windows or doors,
open only to the jaunting of intimate members of the family. Thus was morality maintained and chastity
defended. But since Olivia Presteign was herself blind to normal sight, she could not jaunte. Consequently
her suite was entered through doors closely guarded by ancient retainers in the Presteign clan livery.
Olivia Presteign was a glorious albino. Her hair was white silk, her skin was white satin, her nails, her lips
and her eyes were coral. She was beautiful and blind in a wonderful way, for she could see in the infra
red only, from Moo Angstroms to one millimeter wavelengths. She saw heat waves, magnetic fields,
radio valves, radar, sonar and electro-magnetic fields.
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She was holding her Grand Levee in the drawing-room of the suite. She sat in a brocaded wing chair,
sipping tea guarded by her duenna, holding court, chatting with a dozen men and women standing about
the room. She looked like an exquisite statue of marble and coral, her blind eyes flashing as she saw and
yet did not see.
She saw the drawing-room as a pulsating flow of heat emanations ranging from hot highlights to cool
shadows. She saw the dazzling magnetic patterns of clocks, phones, lights and locks. She saw and
recognized people by the characteristic heat patterns radiated by their faces and bodies. She saw, around
each head, an aura of the faint electro-magnetic brain pattern, and sparkling through the heat radiation of
each body, the ever-changing tone of muscle and nerve.
Presteign did not care for the artists, musicians and fops Olivia kept about her, but he was pleased to
see a scattering of society notables this morning. There was a Sears-Robuck, a Gillet, young Sidney
Kodak who would one day be Kodak of Kodak, a Houbigant, Buick of Buick, and R. H. Macy XVI,
head of the powerful Saks-Gimbel clan.
Presteign paid his respects to his daughter and left the house. He set off for his clan headquarters at 99
Wall Street, in a coach and four driven by a coachman assisted by a groom, both wearing the Presteign
trademark of red, black and blue. That black `P' on a field of scarlet and cobalt was one of the most
ancient and distinguished trademarks in the social register, rivaling the `57' of the Heinz clan and the `RR'
of the Rolls-Royce dynasty in antiquity.
The head of the Presteign clan was a familiar sight to New York Jaunters. Iron grey, handsome,
powerful, impeccably dressed and mannered in the old-fashioned style, Presteign of Presteign was the
epitome of the socially elect, for he was so exalted in station that he employed coachmen, grooms,
hostlers, stableboys and horses to perform a function for him which ordinary mortals performed by
jaunting.
As men climbed the social ladder these days, they displayed their position by their refusal to jaunte. The
newly adopted into a great commercial clan rode an expensive bicycle. A rising clansman drove a small
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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