Death Quotient and Other Stories by John D. Macdonald

Author:John D. Macdonald [MACDONALD, JOHN D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: space ships, alien life forms, aliens, fantasy, cloning, outer space, atomic energy, space exploration, futuristic, space travel, space wars, space warp, supernatural, future events, illusion, alien fugitives, scientific experiments, sonic waves, giant monsters, planet wars, world war, Travis McGee, science fiction, time warp, time travel
ISBN: 9781610130271
Publisher: Wonder eBooks
Published: 2010-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

MINION OF CHAOS

CHAPTER ONE

The Global Rat Trap

It was, he thought, very much like being a rat in a maze, with a very aseptic death around the next corner. The rat, being a rat, suspects the imminence of death, but can make no counter-offensive

It had been building for a long time. He felt it in the studied casualness of his fellow-workers, and in the new alertness of the hated monitor, Miss Ellen Morrit.

A nice clean life, they had said, You’ll be well-protected. The police won’t let the nasty people tear you to death. We hope.

He sighed, turned on the stool and looked back over his shoulder, seeing his name printed in reverse, showing through the translucent glass of the laboratory door. Peter Lucas.

He wondered where he had slipped. And he wondered whether the danger of slipping, the fatal effects of a slip, were coloring his judgment. Maybe Ellen Morrit wasn’t being quite so beady-eyed after all.

No, they were onto him the same way they would be onto any other defective bit of material.

Ellen Morrit sat on a high stool beside the laboratory table. She said dryly, “Through working for the day, Mr. Lucas?”

He looked at her, wondering for the thousandth time why they didn’t dress female employees of the Bureau of Improvement in a more becoming uniform. She was a white starched tube with a severe face at one end and slim ankles at the other. Nice hair, though, under a little gold cap.

“Why are you staring at me, Mr. Lucas ?”

“For a reason that would horrify your factual little mind, sugar bun. How many years have we been sharing this cubicle?”

“Three years, four months and—and nine days,” she said firmly.

“Too long. What do you say we get married?”

She lifted her chin. She quoted from the manual, “ ‘All technical employees of the Bureau of Improvement are forbidden to marry because of the possibility of their aptitudes being to some degree hereditary characteristics.’ “

“But they’ll let a colorless reactionary like you marry?”

She gave him one of her rare smiles; but her gray eyes didn’t smile at all. “As soon as my five years are up, Mr. Lucas.”

“May you be blessed with numerous ice-cream cones.”

He stood up, filled with the familiar dull anger, and walked over to the wide window. His lab was on the tenth floor of the Bureau of Improvement Building. He looked out across the expanse of grass, to the distant flight towers, the wide pastel expanse of the New City. It had a fairy-land look; the architects had been infatuated with tower and minaret.

Yet Peter felt himself drawn to some of the less decayed buildings in the dead city off to the left. A mound of rubble separated the two. In the New City there were cars, pedestrians, glittering shops, gay clothes and the best of music.

In the dead city were the hiding places of the unfit.

He felt her beside him and he defiantly pointed to the mouldering lines of a gray building in the old city, the dead city.

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