The Resurrected Man by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Satellite
Published: 1958-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

"I offered you a smoke from pure friendship," stuttered Hansard. "A gesture to a drinking companion."

"A gesture for which you wanted payment." Baron shrugged. "Don't get me wrong. Personally I don't give a damn what you do, but just keep off my neck, will you?"

"You were careless, Hansard." Carson almost purred as he sipped his brandy. "This man could have been a stooge from the police. You were lucky." He handed Baron a drink and watched as the big man drained the glass at a single gulp. "You drink deep, my friend."

"So what?"

"Nothing. Are you working?"

"I've got a job to go to."

"Good." Carson rose. "You may stay here if you wish." A smile curved the corners of his humorless mouth. "Window dressing shall we say? Just see nothing, hear nothing, and remember to keep your mouth shut."

"And the rates?" Baron reached for the bottle.

"Twenty a week—on the nail."

"Fair enough." The big man smiled as he hefted the one full and one partly opened bottle. "Goodnight."

He was too busy drinking to notice when they left.

The next day he started work. Dressed in thick, cumbersome, anti-radiation armor he sweated in the sludge pits as he cleaned the waste radioactives from the rocket power piles.

The work was hard, grappling with tongs almost as heavy as he could lift, shifting weight at odd angles, trying not to think of the invisible death permeating the entire area from the spilled radio-actives. With him worked criminal ruffians, desperate men glad of the chance to work off a few years of their sentences, and yet trying their best to dodge what could not be avoided. It could not be done. The sludge had to be taken from the piles shifted to the disposal containers, and the containers themselves loaded into heavy, cadmium and lead-sheathed transports. Baron had the job of loading, and his muscles cracked as he heaved the heavy bins into position and when he flexed his arms pain shot through them.

Once a day he ate free at the spaceport canteen, eating enormous quantities of food, stuffing himself against the too frequent hunger tearing at his vitals. After his five-hour shift, when he had washed and rubbed anti-radiation salve into his skin, he went to the poorest section of the city and there drank the crudest, cheapest liquor obtainable. Life narrowed to work, eating and drinking, dream-haunted nightmares, and work again. The alcohol seemed to keep alight the tiny fires within his skull, and though he never seemed to get helplessly drunk yet he was never wholly sober. The craving for alcohol, like the insatiable craving for food, was so inexplicable that he had long since stopped worrying about it.

After a month he lost his job.

He awoke the morning after, his mouth furry with the familiar aftereffects of too much liquor, and sat for a long time on the edge of his bed, head in his hands, trying to clear the mist away from his mind. Light seeped through the dirty windows and he squinted at it, staring at it as at something totally unrecognizable.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.