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Mina Roth returned to her chair, sat, rested her right hand on the
keyboard. "Nister never comes here," she said. "He hasn't contacted
me in several days." She touched a few keys and a cloud was added to
the landscape painting. "I do hope that you didn't pay very much for
your information, since it's far from accurate."
"Actually, I didn't pay a damn thing for it. They fried the andy
before--"
"Enough!" She'd popped the keyboard open and snatched out a lazgun
from a compartment within.
As she spun to fire at him, Jake threw himself to the right.
He squeezed the trigger of his stun gun as he fell, the beam hit her
just below her left breast.
The blonde gasped, bit her lower lip. Her arms and legs went rigid,
her eyes snapped shut.
In falling, she smashed into the keyboard. That modified the painting,
causing explosions of scarlet light to appear among the pine trees.
"Damn," said Jake, walking over and collecting her gun out of her
stiffened fingers. "I wanted to question her."
As he tucked the weapon into his jacket pocket, he scanned the large
room. There was a vidphone sitting in an alcove near the doorway.
Jake sat down at the phone. "Let's see," he said, "what you can tell
me."
The Dings Flohmarkt consisted of a 5-story-high atrium ringed with
wide balconies that were trimmed with fat chrome railings and hundreds
of plastiglass light bubbles The ground level was given over to
vendors of math gadgets, nearly fifty of them hawking from booths,
kiosks, tables and stools.
"Mathats! Mathats!" cried a thin black man who was perched on a
rickety tin stool and holding a chromed derby aloft. "Place it on your
coco and in just seconds you'll be doing algebra or..."
"Smallest calculator known to man!" offered a plump woman who was
wearing a polka dot scarf. "Size of a flyspeck."
"Out of the way, you lop eared ninny," suggested Eva, giving the
zealous vendor a shove that cleared her from their path. "Your chum
was up on Level 2, Gomez, when she flung her wingding." "Where
exactly?"
"Hey, you elephantine bimbo, you knocked six of my calculators out of
my mitt with that brutal and uncalled for shove." The woman was on
hands and knees, patting wildly at the floor. "Finding six of the
tiniest calculators in the world is no easy task. Why not simply pay
me the $50 each that they're worth and we'll call--"
"Don't be a walleyed simp. I don't owe you a damn thing." Eva halted
and glared down at the woman. "Jenny was near the mechanical doll
sellers, Gomez, when--"
"How about you pay for just three of my flyspeck calculators and I'll
absorb the cost of--"
"How about I detach your nose from your pudding face?"
"I'll trot on up to Level 2, Eva," said Gomez. "Join me when you're
finished with this fracas."
"It'll only take a moment or two." The husky detective started to roll
up her sleeves. "Now, let's..."
Gomez hurried up the ramp to the next level. He came first to the
sellers of household gadgets.
"Talking vacuum cleaners," offered a shaggy man in a small lopsided
booth. "The perfect companion for a lonely bachelor such as yourself,
sir."
"I'm happily wed," Gomez assured him, continuing along.
"Pocket ice cube maker! No one should be without this handy device.
How about you, sir?"
"You're absolutely right. And I happen to have one in my pocket
already."
There were about thirty dealers in mechanical dolls and robot toys. At
a large table on Gomez's right a dozen identical 2-foot-high blonde
little girl dolls were tapdancing in unison. As he passed the table,
one of the curly headed dolls danced right off the edge and fell to the
floor.
Bending, he retrieved it. "Talk to your choreographer, chiquita,"
he advised. "You're... owl"
Something jagged beneath the doll's frilly skirt had scratched at his
hand. He set the doll back on the counter, fished out a plyochief and
dabbed at the small bleeding scratch and then moved on.
He hadn't noticed before that the next vendor was trying to unload
SnoHounds. Six of them sat on the floor surrounding the plump man.
"What a treat," exclaimed one of the dogs, "encountering you once
again, Herr Gomez."
He stopped, frowning. "I didn't know you guys could talk."
"Talk and sing," another assured him. "Also tap dance [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]