"Blish, James - To Pay the Piper" - читать интересную книгу автора (Blish James)

corridors hope for something better for their childrena
glimpse of sunlight, a little rain, the fall of a leaf. That's
more important now to all of us than the war, which we
don't believe in any longer. That doesn't even make any
military sense, since we haven't the numerical strength to
occupy the enemy's territory any more, and they haven't the
strength to occupy ours. We understand all that. But we also
know that the enemy is intent on prosecuting the war to the
end. Extermination is what they say they want, on their
propaganda broadcasts, and your own Department reports
that they seem to mean what they say. So we can't give up
fighting them; that would be simple suicide. Are you still with
me?"
"Yes, but I don't see"
"Give me a moment more. If we have to continue to fight,
we know this much: that the first of the two sides to get men
on the surface againso as to be able to attack important
targets, not just keep them isolated in seas of plagueswill be
the side that will bring this war to an end. They know that,
too. We have good reason to believe that they have a re-
education project, and that it's about as far advanced as ours
is."
"Look at it this way," Colonel Mudgett burst in un-
expectedly. "What we have now is a stalemate. A saboteur
occasionally locates one of the underground cities and lets the
pestilences into it. Sometimes on our side, sometimes on
theirs. But that only happens sporadically, and it's just more
of this mutual extermination businessto which we're com-
mitted, willy-nilly, for as long as they are. If we can get troops
onto the surface first, we'll be able to scout out their im-
portant installations in short order, and issue them a surrender
ultimatum with teeth in it. They'll take it. The only other
course is the sort of slow, mutual suicide we've got now."
Hamelin put the tips of his fingers together. "You gentlemen
lecture me about policy as if I had never heard the word
before. I'm familiar with your arguments for sending soldiers
first. You assume that you're familiar with all of mine for
starting with civilians, but you're wrong, because some of
them haven't been brought up at all outside the Department.
I'm going to tell you some of them, and I think they'll merit
your close attention."
Carson shrugged. "I'd like nothing better than to be con-
vinced, Mr. Secretary. Go ahead."
"You of all people should know, Dr. Carson, how close
our underground society is to a psychotic break. To take a
single instance, the number of juvenile gangs roaming these
corridors of ours has increased 400 per cent since the rumors
about the Re-Education Project began to spread. Or another:
the number of individual crimes without motivecrimes
committed just to distract the committer from the grinding