"Piers Anthony - Bio of a Space Tyrant 03 - Politician" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anthony Piers)

Bio of a Space Tyrant Volume 3: Politician
Piers Anthony

[Scanner Note: Throughout this text you will find [] as replacements for symbols that were contained within the book.]

Contents

Editorial Preface
1. SUB
2. NYORK
3. YBOR
4. MEGAN
5. DORIAN GRAY
6. THORLEY
7. SENATOR
8. SEDUCTION
9. GANYMEDE
10. CONFESSION
11. PARDON
12. SATURN
13. IMPEACHMENT
14. FORFEIT
15. SPIRIT
16. VISION
17. REBA
18. COUNTERSTROKE
19. WIVES
Editorial Epilog
Editorial Preface

This is the third of five manuscripts to be published following the death of Hope Hubris, the so-called Tyrant of Jupiter, detailing his private impressions of his ascent through the political currents of the planet. The first manuscript covers his traumatic experience as a Hispanic refugee in space at age fifteen; the second covers the period of his enlistment in the Jupiter Navy. He has in all these narratives neglected or glossed over many of the technical details, such as hard-nosed quid-pro-quo bargaining or necessary political compromises or tedious research on issues and rivals. It is evident that his true interest was not in these things, though he was competent in all of them and always did what he needed to prevail. Fortunately, much of that material is available in the open record, while the purely personal aspect is not. It has been too easy for historians to forget that the Tyrant was in fact an intensely personal man, by no means arbitrary or cold-blooded in his dealings with others. This volume should help correct that misimpression, however else it may be faulted. It also clarifies the basis of such things as the "Sancho" situation, the mystery of "Dorian Gray," and the secret of how the Tyrant learned to speak Russian, and it offers hints of his nature that in retrospect make his tenure as the Tyrant less perplexing. Of course, no one realized, in the period that this manuscript covers, that he was destined to assume that power. He was merely a Hispanic politician.

H. M. H.

Chapter 1 SUB

I woke in squalor. The stench tried to choke me; I found myself trying to breathe only out, never in, but of course, that was futile.

Where was I? Darkness pressed in about me, absolute, impenetrable, horrifying. Slowly my disgust at the odor faded as my alarm at the gloom gained. Was I incarcerated in some deep subterranean cell, doomed never to see light again?

My panic gave way in turn to some common sense. Subterranean cells were rare, for in this age of space, mankind existed mostly in pressurized bubbles that orbited in interplanetary reaches or floated in planetary atmosphere or adhered to the surfaces of moons or fragments. Only in the last case was there any terrain to delve beneath-and that was generally used only for secure anchorage, being too precious to waste on mere people. If someone needed confinement it was easier to put him in a cage than to excavate a hole in a frozen moon. I was not even cold; the temperature was neutral. So, if I was buried it was in the bowel of some city or ship, and others of my kind were close by.

My mind focused on this problem, as I seemed to have nothing better to do at the moment, and it distracted me from the discomfort of my situation. If I assumed I was in a city-what city might that be?

Well, where had I last been? Again panic welled up. I could not remember! My past was blank. I had a general knowledge of solar geography but could not place myself within it. It was as if I did not exist.

Of course I existed, I reassured myself. I was here, wasn't I? Surely I had not formed spontaneously in the sludge of the Nile! I was an adult human being.

The Nile-that was on Planet Earth, the location of the origin of man. My kind had evolved there, learned to prevail over the restrictions of nature, and increased its population at the expense of other creatures and the natural environment until over five billion human beings crowded the single planet. Then the development of gravity shielding had enabled man to travel cheaply to other parts of the Solar System and to colonize them. It was simply a matter of building bubbles, which were giant spheres, hermetically sealed, pressurized to normal Earth-surface atmosphere, spun to generate centrifugal pseudogravity -simply termed gee-and stocked with necessary equipment and supplies. Then these bubbles were loaded with people and shielded from the effect of planetary gravity so that they floated free of the ground and, indeed, free of the atmosphere. If gravity diffusion is sufficient to reduce the effective weight of an object to one percent of its normal weight, a propulsive force of one percent will do the job of lifting that otherwise requires a hundred percent. That makes it relatively easy to escape the gravity well of a planet. Of course, mass, as contrasted to weight, is unchanged; acceleration in space still requires full force. But the enormous problem of planetary escape had been solved. Man utilized gravity shielding to spread explosively across the Solar System. He has not spread out into the wider galaxy because the shielding does not facilitate that; the ancient Einsteinian limits hold.