Page 51 - Extraterrestrials, Foreign and Domestic

Anteroom

seating themselves as far as possible from the dipsomaniac, the
man pacing back and forth.
The older woman spoke first.
“Let’s try to make some sense of this. First, why us? We’ve
never met. So, who are we? I’m Alice N. Ordnung, senior
administrative assistant to Oliver D. Zein, vice president in charge
of logo products distribution at Buckshot Enterprises.”
A brief silence was broken by slow applause from the sprawled
man.
“Gainfully employed, and by a big old multinational maker of
cheap handguns, expensive cologne, and everything in between.
Yeah. Just for the record, I’m Wilton Devine, unemployed since
nineteen-sixty-nine and proud of it.”
The younger woman looked away, as if from a scene of carnage.
“I am Ann Tiffany. I teach creation science at Holy Relic High
School. I cannot think of any earthly reason why I should be
trapped in here with you—you people.”
The pacing man stopped in his tracks and glanced at the ceiling.
His eyes had narrowed into crafty little slits. “I am Claudius
Quintilian Cumber,” he began, in a voice louder than necessary.
“My friends call me C. Q., and I would like to think they are out
looking for me right now. I am a mail order computer salesman,
but I do not know anything about the new QPF-6000 chip.”
Wilton again clapped sarcastically.
“And we’re all involved in an elaborate industrial espionage plot
to get that secret out of you, Comrade Cumber. Do you think this
place is bugged, that hidden cameras are recording your every
facial tic?”
C. Q. turned on him.
“Do you have any better suggestion, you lazy bum? I think it’s
highly suspicious that these rooms apparently have no windows
and no lighting fixtures, but it is perfectly bright in here. And
where is the ventilation intake and outflow? What are those walls
made of? They won’t give, they won’t scratch, they’re neither
warm nor cold. I’ve never seen any material like the stuff that’s
covering this sofa. Have you? And I would bet anything that we’re
being observed.”

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