H. Beam Piper & J. J. McGuire Null ABC

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left.
On the way, he passed two women, and caught a snatch of conversation:
"Don't go down on the third floor, for Heaven's sake ... terrible fight ...
smashing everything up "
Worried, he continued into Liquor, and the looks of the crowd there increased
his worries. Too many men between twenty and thirty, all dressed alike,
looking alike, talking and acting alike. It looked like a goon-gang
infiltration, and he was beginning to see why Harvey Graves had wanted the
Literates pulled out, and why Joyner, bound by ethics to do nothing against
the commercial interests of Pelton's, had known nothing about it. He
started toward a counter, to speak to a clerk, but one of the
stocky, quietly-dressed young men stepped in front of him.
"Gimme a bottle of Atom-Bomb," he said. "Don't bother wrapping it."
"Yes, sir." The clerk seemed worried, too. He got the bottle and set it on the
counter. "That'll be two C, sir."
"I see you're wearing a Radical-Socialist button," the customer commented.
"Because you want to, or because Chet Pelton makes you?"
"Mr. Pelton never interferes with his employees' political convictions," the
clerk replied loyally.
Saying nothing, the customer took the bottle, swung it by the neck, and
smashed it over the clerk's head, knocking him senseless.
"That's all that rotgut's good for," the customer said, jumping over the
counter. "All right, boys; help yourselves!"
For a surprisingly long time, the riot was localized in China, where it had
begun. Using, alternately, three
TV-pickups around the scene of the disturbance, Prestonby watched its
progress, and watched successive details of store personnel, armed with
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clubs and a few knives and sono pistols, hit the riot, shouting their battle
cry, and vanish. They were, of course, lambs of sacrifice, however unlamblike
their conduct. They were buying time, and they were drawing groups of goons
into the action in China and
Glassware who might have been making trouble elsewhere.
There was an outbreak on the sixth floor, in Liquor; Claire, touring the store
on the other TV-screen, spotted it and called his attention to it. Back of the
shattered glass partition, a mob of men were snatching bottles from the
shelves and tossing them out to the crowd. One of the clerks, in his gray
uniform jacket, was lying unconscious outside. While Prestonby watched,
another, and another, came flying out the doorway. A fourth victim, in
ordinary business clothes, tattered and disheveled, came flying out after
them, to land in a heap, stunned for an instant, and then pick himself up.
Prestonby laughed heartily when he recognized Literate undercover First Class
Russell M. Latterman.
"I ought to have anticipated that," he said. "Any time there's a riot, the
liquor stores are the first things looted. The liquor stores, and the Claire!
See what's going on in Sporting Goods!"
Sporting Goods, between Tools & Hardware and Toys, on the fifth floor, was
swamped. One of the clerks was lying on the floor in a puddle of blood, past
any help; none of the others were in sight. The gun racks and pistol cases
were being cleaned out systematically. This had been organized in advance.
There were four or five men working industriously wiping grease out of bores
and actions before handing out firearms, and a couple more making sure that
the right cartridges went with each weapon. Somebody had brought a small
grinding wheel over from Tools and plugged it in, and was grinding points on
the foils and
�p�es. Others were collecting baseball bats, golf clubs, and football helmets
and catchers' masks. The
Tool Department was being stripped of everything that could be used as a
weapon, too.
The whole store, by this time, was an approximation of Mutiny in a Madhouse.
Dressgoods was being looted by a howling mob of women, who were pulling bolts
of material from shelves and fighting among themselves over them. Somebody had
turned on the electric fans, and long streams of flimsy fabric were
blowing about like a surrealist maypole dance. Somebody in Household
Furnishings had turned on a couple of fans, too, and a mob of hoodlums
were opening cans of paint and throwing them into the fan blades.
The little Antiques Department, in a corner of the fourth floor back of the
Gift Shoppe, was an island of peace in the general chaos. There was only one
way into it, and one of the clerks, who had gotten himself into a suit of
Fifteenth Century battle armor, was standing in the entrance, leaning on a
two-hand sword.
There was blood on the long blade, and more blood splashed on the floor in
front of him. He was being left entirely alone.
Hutschnecker, called to the telephone, spoke briefly, listened for a while,
spoke again in hearty thanks, and hung up.
"Macy & Gimbel's," he told Prestonby. "They heard about our
trouble probably one of their price-spotters phoned in about it and they're
offering to send twenty of their store-cops to help us out.
They'll be landing on our stage in eight minutes, rifles and steel helmets."
Prestonby nodded. It would have been quite conceivable that Pelton's chief
competitor had started the riot; since they hadn't, their offer of
armed aid was just as characteristic of the bitter but
mutually-respectful rivalries of the commercial world. A few minutes later,
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another call came in, this time on the visiphone. Prestonby took it when he
saw a Literates' Guards officer in the screen and recognized him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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