Sprague de Camp's New Anthology
- Автор: Де Камп Лайон Спрэг
- Год: 1953
- Язык: английский
- Год: Panther
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Sprague de Camp's New Anthology». Краткое содержание книги:
"Okay, Miss Hauch. S'long."
She was gone. Kaalund rumbled: "Let me see dat bag, Claude. I am here from being poisoned to stop you as veil as other tings."
Godwin wordlessly handed over the bag. Kaalund looked in and handed it back. "Gumdrops!"
Godwin took out a gumdrop. Now the pattern became a little clearer. She must have said something like "Do not swallow them; hold (or pinch) them between the teeth." If it had only been possible for her to repeat the sentence ...
He gripped a gumdrop firmly between his molars. It softened and dissolved with the passing of the minutes. Now, if she had meant to convey a message in one of these things, it would be in some sort of capsule. He would have to eat his way through the entire bag to be sure.
When the first gumdrop had gone the way of all confections, he took a second. Kaalund looked at him with a mouth-watering expression, but Godwin hard-heartedly ignored it and continued to consume the candies himself. It would hardly do to have the message-capsule eaten by his guardian. The detective muttered something about:
"I see vat she meant by de kind of people actors is!"
Godwin continued devouring his way through the bag. When he had eaten over half the gumdrops, he came to one that felt a little different from the others.
It had a hard core, and as the gelatinous outside dissolved away his teeth closed down upon this object, not much bigger than a vitamin pill. As he wondered whether he would have to hide the capsule under his tongue until Kaalund was asleep, so that he could investigate it more closely, a buzzing sensation in his teeth startled him so that he almost dropped the thing out of his mouth.
Recovering in time, he gripped the capsule more firmly. The thing contained a tiny sound-record player which had been actuated by the pressure of his teeth, and which was now playing off its record. The sound was transmitted through his teeth and skull so that he could hear it quite clearly though nobody else could. He heard:
"Mr. Godwin! Mr. Godwin! This is Karen Hauch. By now you know of Minister Gram's plans for us. I do not wish to marry you, and I suppose you feel the same way. Our only chance of escape is by air, but I do not know if I can make arrangements. See if you can bribe Detective Kaalund."
The record stopped. Godwin bit it again without result. He had heard of these phonographic capsules; the only way to repeat the record would be to unscrew the casing and wind it up again with a microscopic screw-driver. After some thought, Godwin swallowed the capsule.
That left the rest of the gumdrops. Although this was probably the only one with a message, there was a chance that another might contain a similar capsule with further plans of escape. He therefore did not dare hand over the rest of the bag to Kaalund, though he was already sated with the taste of gumdrops. He kept right on eating, remarking to the ceiling: "You know, Sven old man, my studio would pay plenty to get me back pronto. We were just gonna start shooting Scaramouche, and it'll raise hell with their plans if they gotta dig up a new star at this late date."
"Unh," said Kaalund.
"In fact, I'm not exactly broke myself. If I chipped in, the guy who arranged to have me sent back to Hollywood would pick up a nice piece of lettuce."
"Ha. You tink I am vun of your corrupt American policemen, so you can bribe me to let you go, huh? Veil, dis is Gronland, Claude, and de sooner you learn de difference the better off you are. No more bribes, please."
Godwin stewed a while in silence, then said: "Say, don't they have anything to read in this dump?"
"Do you read Dansk?"
"No."
"Den it vould no good do you. De newspapers and books in de hospital library is all in Dansk, except some in Eskimo."
The door opened again and the nurse spoke to Kaalund, who reported: "Another visitor, Claude. My, such a popular fellow ve got!"
The visitor turned out to be a stout eyeglassed young man, who bounced in and said effusively: "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Godwin! I am Karl Bruun, the son of Viggo Bruun. We understand you wish to visit my father's laboratories?"
"I did say something of the sort to Gram."
"Would tomorrow morning suit you?"
"Okay, if they let me out by then. Do you work in this lab?"
"Only on my off-time. I am a whale-herd."
"A what?"
"I herd whales. The bowhead whale, once almost extinct, is one of Greenland's main economic assets."
"How do you do it? I mean, d'you chase 'em around with a motor-boat?"
"No, with a helicopter. I also have to be ready to drive off orcas. Just now my relief has the machine out. We shall see you tomorrow morning, then. And by the way, lest you be bored while awaiting your release from the hospital, I brought you some gumdrops." Karl Bruun handed over another paper bag. "They taste better if you grip them between your teeth and let them dissolve slowly. I must be running; good-bye!"
Godwin glared into the bag. Another capsule message? He grimly popped the first into his mouth ...
This time he had to go through nearly the entire bag, while Kaalund glowered at him and made Danish noises in his throat. At last he came upon the one containing the capsule. The message said:
"Mr. Godwin? You know who this is. If you do not like your situation we may find it possible to co-operate, for there are those who would like to do, with that upon which the present stasis depends, that which you would like to do with yourself. If you agree, signify by saying, when you meet us, 'The gumdrops were superb'."
Now what did that mean? They (the Bruuns, he supposed) evidently wanted to help him somehow, but he could not make any sense of that long and involved third sentence. He would play along with them anyway to see what happened.
He finished the bag, crumpled it, and threw it into the waste basket just as the nurse announced another visitor. This was a tall blond young man of pure Nordic type with several scars crisscrossing his face, who began:
"Godwin? I'm Werner von Wittelsbach. My boss, Thor Thomson, sent me to ask if you were comfortable."
"I'm doing about as good as you can in jail."
"Mr. Thomsen will be glad to hear it. By the way, he thought you might like these."
And the young man thrust forward a third bag of white paper. As Godwin took it, von Wittelsbach said: "He suggests you go through the gumdrops before you start on the big piece."
Godwin, looking into the bag, saw that it did indeed contain a number of gumdrops and, at the bottom, something that looked like a small chocolate-bar wrapped in aluminium fail.
"Thanks," he said with notable lack of enthusiasm.
The face of Werner von Wittelsbach, who was standing by Godwin's bed, now underwent a noticeable change. Up to now the young man had behaved with the correct and colourless affability of any well-brought-up man sent on such an errand. Now, however, there was a glitter of animosity in his eye and a hostile edge to his voice as he said:
"So you are the so-called Saxon Pretender, eh?"
"The—? Oh, that. So they, tell me, though I think it's a lot of fertilizer. And you're the—uh—Jacobite Pretender, huh?"
"I am the rightful King of Great Britain. We shall see, sir, whose claim prevails."
Thereupon von Wittelsbach brought his heels together with a click, bowed, and stalked out. Godwin had never seen anybody click heels outside of actors playing parts in movies about Old Vienna; he did not suppose that anybody actually did it in the twenty-second century. Yet there it was.
"Herregott!" said Kaalund. "Are dey trying vith gumdrops to poison you? You better not eat dem all; dey make you sick."
Godwin glowered at his jailer and went grimly to work on the gumdrops, though by now the taste almost nauseated him. This time the one with the capsule was the third one he ate. The message ran: