The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ministry of Disturbance, by Henry Beam Piper

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Title: Ministry of Disturbance

Author: Henry Beam Piper

Release Date: February 24, 2007 [EBook #20659]
Last updated: January 19, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

MINISTRY ... OF DISTURBANCE

BY H. BEAM PIPER

Illustrated by van Dongen

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| Transcriber's Note |
| |
| This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction |
| December 1958. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence |
| that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. |
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_Sometimes getting a job is harder than the job after you get
it--and sometimes getting out of a job is harder than either!_

[Illustration]

The symphony was ending, the final triumphant paean soaring up and up,
beyond the limit of audibility. For a moment, after the last notes had
gone away, Paul sat motionless, as though some part of him had followed.
Then he roused himself and finished his coffee and cigarette, looking
out the wide window across the city below--treetops and towers, roofs
and domes and arching skyways, busy swarms of aircars glinting in the
early sunlight. Not many people cared for Joao Coelho's music, now, and
least of all for the Eighth Symphony. It was the music of another time,
a thousand years ago, when the Empire was blazing into being out of the
long night and hammering back the Neobarbarians from world after world.
Today people found it perturbing.

He smiled faintly at the vacant chair opposite him, and lit another
cigarette before putting the breakfast dishes on the serving-robot's
tray, and, after a while, realized that the robot