"Anthony, Piers - Battle Circle 03 - Neq the Sword (b)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

"I'll take the message. But first I think I'd better see to your defenses. I can round up a few men!"

"No. We have never worked that way."

"Crazies, look," Neq exclaimed, exasperated. "If you don't work that way now, your post will surely and shortly be a smoking hole, and you buried under it. You have to take some note of reality."

"A compelling case," the man admitted. "You have obviously had tactical experience. But if we do not function according to our philosophy, we have no point in functioning at all."

Neq shook his head. "Crazy," he repeated, admiring their perverse courage. "Give me your message."

The main post was a school. The message was for one Doctor Jones, and he meant to deliver it personally to the man.

A blonde crazy girl sat at a desk as though guarding her master from intrusions. "And who is calling?" she asked, her professional eye analyzing him comprehensively. She was quite clean, and that was mildly annoying too.

"Neq the Sword."

"N E K or N E G?"

He merely stared at her.

"Oh, illiterate," she said after a moment. "Dr. Jones will see you now."

He entered the interior office and handed over the written message. The aged, balding crazy within broke the seal immediately and studied the scribbled sheet of paper. He looked grave. "I wish we had been able to install telephonic cables. So our trucks have not been getting through?" he obviously knew the answer.

"Those two men are probably dead by now," Neq said. "Crazies just won't listen to reason. I offered to protect them, but..."

"Our ways differ from yours. Otherwise we would be nomads ourselves, as many of us have been, in youth."

"You were a warrior?" Neq asked incredulously. "What weapon?"

"Sword, like you. But that was forty years ago."

"Why did you give it up?"

"I discovered a superior philosophy."

Oh. "Well, those crazies at the outposts are dying by their philosophies. You'd better call them in."

"I shall."

At least the crazy master had some sense! "Why is this happening? Attacks on your posts, hostels, it was never this way before."

"Never in your memory, perhaps. I could give you an answer, but not a completely satisfactory one." Dr. Jones sat behind his desk and made figures with his hands. He had long spindly wrinkled fingers. "We have been unable to supply the hostels properly in recent months. Normal attrition thus reduces some of these to virtual uselessness for travelers. When that happens, some men react adversely, and lacking the stability of civilization, they strike out senselessly. They are hungry, they want clothing and weapons, and none are available. They feel they have been unfairly denied."

"But why can't you supply them anymore?"

"Because our own supplies have been cut off. We are chiefly distributors; we do not manufacture the implements. We do have a number of mechanized farms, but food is only part of our service."

"You get the weapons and things from somebody else?" Neq had not realized this.