Gift of Darkness

Начало книги

His name was Crispin Tyler and he had worked very hard for twenty-nine of his fifty-two years. Intersystem Metals had automatically acquired his talents through the standard screening tests, had installed him in the junior executive training program and, except for the mechanical memories of the bank of Ref-dex equipment in Personnel, had forgotten him.

There had been a long succession of desks, stretching back through twenty-nine years, and as he sat in his office, wrapped in a spell of mellow sadness that had become endemic, it was as though he could see those desks reflected in angled mirrors, stretching back into dusky shadows.

And this, of course, was the best desk of them all — styled and designed for him after the rather frighteningly brisk young lady from Office Engineering had spent two days watching him work. The communi-phones were right here, of course, and the wall screen buttons right there, and the slightest foot pressure over on that spot slid the file drawer open with greasy silent movement. Dicto-writing was made simple by the microphones set in just such a way that his normal tone reproduced the necessary letters and memos. It was best not to sigh, because then the metal throat of the interrogator would say, “Repeat, please,” electronically disturbed by a sound that could not be spelled.

Читать дальше →