"David Brin - Just a Hint" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

"Idiots!" Fetham hissed. "Why, the first beamed message will reach my first
target star only this year! It will take more years for their reply to reach us, barring
any delay in interpreting the message!"
"Are all governments as stupid as ours?"
Gathu stiffened. His ridge crest waved in suppressed irritation.
"You may, of course, emigrate to any other nation you wish, Academician. The
international Concords give you the right to establish yourself as a citizen of any
system of government found under our sun."
"Shall I arrange to have the papers sent over? Perhaps you'll have better luck..."
Gathu's voice trailed off, for Fetham had raised his hands in the Gesture of
Supreme Disgust and fled the room.


Federman stared at the ceiling while he tilted back in his swivel chair. "You know,
someone once told me that the true definition of genius was the ability to suddenly
see the obvious."
Liz Browning stopped pacing long enough to pick up her coffee cup. The stained
newspaper was open to a page of boldface headlines and photos of armed men.
"Do you mean that the answer may just be staring us in the face? Are you saying
we're stupid?"
"Not stupid. Obstinate, perhaps. We hold on to our basic assumptions
tenaciously, even when they are about to kill us. It's the way human beings work.
"For instance, did you know that for years Europeans thought tomatoes were
poisonous? No one bothered to test the assumption.
"Even the most daring and open of us can't question an assumption until he
becomes aware of it! When everyone accepts a paradigm it never becomes a topic
of conversation. There must be thousands, millions, of things like that which men
and women never even notice because they don't stand out from the background."
Liz shook her head.
"You don't have to belabor the point. Every sophomore has thought about that at
one time or another. And it's certainly happened that some genius has leapt out of
the bathtub, screaming 'Eureka!' and gone on to tell everybody of the new way to do
things."
She tapped the newspaper.
"But this isn't as easy as that. Our problem of world survival is made up of
several hundred million tiny problems, each with all the complexity of a living
person. There's no underlying simplicity to war and politics, much as Marxists and
others dream of finding one. They only make matters worse with simplistic claims
and pseudologic."
Federman sat up straight and rested both palms on the desk. He looked at Liz
seriously.
"The idea is that we may have missed something basic."
He stood up quickly, and instantly regretted it as his heart pounded to make up
for the shift in blood pressure. For a moment, the room lost its focus.
Deliberately, to keep Liz from becoming concerned, he picked his way around the
clutter of books and charts on the floor and rested his shoulder against the window
frame.
Brisk, cool spring morning air flooded in, carrying away the stale odors of the
night. There was the sweet, heavy smell of new-mown grass.
On its way to him the breeze toyed with the branches of aspen and oak trees and