"John Dalmas - The Regiment A Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dalmas John)

the way they had been used to. And to continue to make those machines
and keep them operating required technology. So they believed they could
not do without the technology.
Thus they decided to abolish* research if they could. Without research,
without science, they could not redevelop the knowledge with which to
reinvent those great weapons. Reactive wars they still might have, but
they would not be nearly as destructive as the war they had fled. They
would still be able to kill large numbers of non-warriors-those who had not
chosen the Way of War-but they would hardly be able to destroy whole
populations.
To abolish science was the only thing they could think of to do about it,
and they did not at first see how they could accomplish that. All they
could do at once was to erase certain knowledge within their computers.
So they erased all knowledge which they thought might be dangerous.
But they believed that that would not be enough, for it seemed to them
that in time, the knowledge would be rediscovered.
Now, they knew that some of the people with them, called "mentechs,"
had worked in primitive technologies of the mind, which they regarded
entirely as an electrochemical* system. So they sent to the mentechs
and asked them if they could suggest anything.
And they could. They thought it might be possible to treat everyone who
was on the ships, and their children forever, so that they would never
follow the way of science. They could still follow freely the way of
technology, but research-the activity of science, the exploration of the
rules of the universe-would become impossible. Hopefully, even the
possibility of science-the thought that there could be such a thing-would
no longer occur to them.
The rulers decided to try it.
But, you may be thinking to yourself, that is going about it in a strange
and illogical way. Why not simply decide not to make such weapons?
Why not simply respect the different Ways? But they did not have the
T'sel. So they did the best they could think of.
Soon the mentechs had developed a sequence* of actions, a treatment.
This treatment caused the person to not look for understanding beyond
that which people already had. It would not even occur to them that there
was any further understanding to be had, and they would dislike and fear
and reject any idea of it.
And secret tests showed that it was successful. People treated and then
tested thought exactly the way the mentechs had predicted.
Here is how the treatment worked. The person was given a certain special
substance which, to put it briefly, made him very susceptible to obeying
commands. Whatever the command might be. The commands given him
were, in summation,* that the understanding of nature was already as
complete as possible; nothing further was knowable. And these
commands were enforced by brief shocks of great pain. It did not take
long to do this, and numerous people could be treated each day on each
ship.
Now, people of different septs had been put to live in different
compartments, so far as possible. And when the mental treatment had
been tested and proven, the rulers approached the sept leaders. They told