"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 03 - Soldier Ask Not" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

Note: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this
book is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the
publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment
for this "stripped book."
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this
book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely
coincidental.
SOLDIER, ASK NOT
Copyright o 1967 by Gordon R. Dickson
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions
thereof, in any form.
Cover art by Royo
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010
Tor * is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 0-812-50400-3
First Tor edition: April 1993
Printed in the United States of America
0987654321
CHAPTER 1
, Sect, Kij\Tjia&тВмu 'AxtXijo?тАФbegins the Iliad of Homer, and its story of
thirty-four hundred years ago. This is the story of the wrath of Achilles.тАФAnd
this is the story of my wrath; I, Earthman, against the people of the two
worlds so-called The Friendlies, the conscript, fanatic, black-clad soldiers
of Harmony and Association. Nor is it the story of any small anger. For like
Achilles, I am a man of Earth.
That does not impress you? Not in these days when the sons of the younger
worlds are taller, stronger, more skilled and clever than we of the Old World?
Then, how little you know Earth, and the sons of Earth. Leave your younger
worlds and come back to the Mother Planet, once, and touch her. She is still
here and still the same. Her sun still shines on the waters of the Red Sea mat
parted before the Children
тАв Gordon R. Dickson
of the Lord. The wind still blows in the Pass of Thermopylae, where Leonidas
with the Spartan Three Hundred held back the hosts of Xerxes, King of the
Persians, and changed history. Here, men fought and died and bred and buried
and built for more than five hundred thousand years before your newer worlds
were even dreamed of by man. Do you think those five centuries of tens-of-
centuries, generation upon generation, between the same sky and soil left no
special mark on us in blood and bone and soul?
The men of the Dorsai may be warriors above imagining. The Exotics of Mara and
Kultis may be robed magicians who can turn a man inside out and find answers
outside philosophy. The researchers in hard sciences on Newton and Venus may
have traveled so far beyond ordinary humans that they can talk to us only
haltingly, nowadays. But weтАФwe duller, shorter, simpler men of Old Earth still
have something more than any of these. For we are still the whole being of
man, the basic stock, of which they are only the refined partsтАФflashing, fine-
honed, scintillant parts. But parts.