The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner Read Free Book Online Page B

Okay, I'll come to your car."
    Mechanically she walked on; now, for a change, he matched her strides, though it was perceptibly frustrating to his energetic frame.
    Nothing more was said until they reached the spot where she had left the little Hailey under the harsh beams of a mercury-vapor light.
    "I wonder if I did love him," she said suddenly.
    "You were the person who thought she didn't know how, weren't you? But you must have. Coming in search of me like this is proof of it.
    It can't have been easy."
    "No, it wasn't." The finger whose nail she had torn was still tender; she had trouble guiding her key into the lock.
    "Funny," Austin said, looking at the car.
    "What is?"
    "People thinking of steam as being clean. My grandmother lived in a house backing on a railroad. Couldn't hang out laundry for fear of smuts. I grew up thinking of steam as filthy."
    "Sermon time?" Peg snapped, reaching to open the passenger door.
    "And you called Train, come to that!"
    "A stale joke," he said, getting in. "Train as in powder train. A very old name. Originally it meant a trap or snare."
    "Yes, you told me. I'm sorry. Next time I want to try and get one of these Freon-vapor cars…Oh, shit! I'm rambling. Do you-do you mind if I have a cigarette?"
    "No."
    "You mean yes."
    "I mean no. You need a tranquilizer, and tobacco isn't the most dangerous kind." He half turned in the narrow seat. "Peg, you went to a lot of trouble. I do appreciate it."
    "Then why do I get a welcome about as warm as someone carrying plague?" Fumbling in her purse. "How did you hear, anyway?"
    "He had a meet with me this morning. When he didn't show I made inquiries."
    "Shit, I should have guessed."
    "But he didn't come just to see me. He has a sister working in LA, you know, and there's some family problem he wanted to sort out."
    "No, I don't know. He never told me he had a sister!" With a vicious jab at the dashboard lighter.
    "They quarreled. Hadn't met for years…Peg, I really am sorry!
    It's-well, it's the nature of your job that makes me react badly. I lived in the spotlight for a long time, you know, and I just couldn't stand it any more once I realized what they were doing to me: using me to prove they cared about the world when in fact they didn't give a fart. After me the deluge! So I generated my smokescreen and disappeared. But if things go on the way they've been going lately…"
    He spread his hands. They were the first things that had suggested to Peg she might learn to like him, thorny though he was, because they were fractionally overlarge for his body, the sort of hands nature might have reserved for a sculptor or a pianist, and despite being thick-knuckled they were somehow beautiful. "Well, if one reporter knows how to find me, another may, and eventually it may be the fuzz."
    "Are you really afraid of being arrested?"
    "Do you think I shouldn't be? Don't you know what happened right on Wilshire this morning?"
    "Yes, but you don't organize their demonstrations!" The lighter clicked out; her hand shook so much she could barely guide it to the cigarette.
    "True. But I wrote their bible and their creed, and if I were put on oath I couldn't deny that I meant every last word."
    "I should hope not," she muttered, letting go a ragged puff of gray smoke. The taste, though, wasn't soothing but irritating, because she'd stood on that corner for more than half an hour without her filtermask.
    After a second unpleasant drag she stubbed it. "How old are you, Austin?"
    "What?"
    "How old are you is what I said. I'm twenty-eight and it's a matter of public record. The president of the United States is sixty-six. The chairman of the Supreme Court is sixty-two. My editor is fifty-one.
    Decimus was thirty last September."
    "And he's dead."
    "Yes. Christ, what a waste!" Peg stared blankly through the windshield. Approaching with grunts and snorts was one of the eight-ton crane-trucks used to collect automobiles without legal filters.
    This one had trapped exotic