"Brunner, John - The Repairmen of Cyclops" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brunner John)

lower rates; only the Patrol paid ten-for-one in the
unique currency of life.
She had served twenty years as an on-planet agent,
among stinking barbarians lost in a mud-wallow, and she
was entitledif she chose to take it here and nowto a
guaranteed two centuries of comfortable, healthy life,
anywhere she chose. She could even go clear back to
Earth, for she had been born there.
Wistfully, she looked at the black star-spangled back-
drop of space, wondering what had happened on the
mother world in the period she had been away.
She had been so optimistic . . . Right at the beginning
of her career, when she was making out so badly in the
Corps that she risked not even being promoted lieutenant
from her initial probationer statusand hence losing for-
ever her chance at longevity-paymentshe had saved ev-
erything and indeed acquired some small reputation by a
successful coup on a barbarian planet: one of the isolated
Zarathustra Refugee Planets where fugitives had survived
after fleeing the hell of the Zarathustra nova more than
seven centuries previous.
But when she was offered a post as an on-planet agent,
supervising and watching the progress of these stranded
outcasts of humanity, since she was not permitted to re-
turn to the world where she had stirred up such a to-do,
she had had to pick almost at random from the existing
four or five vacancies.
And she had realised quite shortly after being assigned
her post, in which the minimum stay was twenty years,
that she had chosen wrong.
It had seemed that something was going to happen on
the planet she selecteda transition from the typical
mud-grubbing peasant level where many of the refugees
had got stuck, .to an expanding phase of incipient civilisa-
tion, with some industrialisation and a great deal of
cross-cultural influence: fascinating material to study at
first-hand.
But that occurrence depended on the survival of an
organisational genius who had inherited the headship of a
strategically sited city-state. And within a month of her
arrival, one of his jealous rivals assassinated him and
seized power, condemning the planet to at least one more
generation of stagnancy.
She was absolutely forbidden to interfere. And, having
to sit helplessly- by and watch nothing happen, she had
grown so bored she hardly dared think about it.
Now was time for leave, and reassignment. Her
"death" had been arranged; her successor had been
briefed and was even now aboard the Patrol ship which
would land him with utter secrecy to take over his care-