"Mark S. Geston - Lords Of The Starship" - читать интересную книгу автора (Geston Mark S)

might and power and skills have almost all been purged from the earth."
Limpkin nodded and then simply asked, "How did it happen?"
"What happen?"
"The end of the First Days."
"Oh? Not even the Black Libraries can tell us that, but I can make a
guess as to how long ago it happened: three thousand years."
"Small wonder that traces of the old World are so hard to find. It must
have been an incredible cataclysm."
"Perhaps. Some volumes in the Black Library at Calnarith hypothesize an
Apocalypse of some sort, but these accounts are always submerged in so much
religious rot -- Second Comings and the like -- as to be almost useless. But
whether our loss in man occurred just before any Arrnageddon or, more likely,
as the result of one, is irrelevant. The thing was lost and then all the
horrible decline followed. Perhaps men just went to bed one night, and when
they awoke they found that the night had stolen something from them.
"In some places the fall was rapid and absolute, as it is in the far
west and south. In other places, here for instance, the fall was slow and
agonizing. Hell, Limpkin, if I see right, we are still sliding and won't stop
until our lands are as sterile as the Black Barrens, our cities occupied by
dry rot and worms, and our descendants the pets of lizards."
"And now it is you, my dear General, who is painting the black picture.
Obviously, you have brought me here to present a scheme for relieving the
blackness. What do you suggest?"
Toriman blew a smoke ring and lightly said, "Rebuild."
Limpkin had expected something a trifle more original. He let out a
little laugh. "General, I realize that that is the way out but certain rather
formidable obstacles stand in one's way."
"Overcome them." The General seemed to have sunk into a pocket of
conceit arising from his very evident ignorance of the real state of the
nation; Limpkin wondered, for the smallest of moments, if the man was going
senile. Limpkin patiently pointed out, "My Office has been working on that
problem for the past century and we have come no closer . . ."
"That is because you were not working with the right tools nor with the
right technique," Toriman said amiably.
Limpkin was beginning to get upset. "Perhaps being always on the
business of war, dashing across the country from one campaign to another, you
have not been able to examine the land and the common people as closely as I
have.
"I admit that, by comparison, the Caroline is in pretty fair shape; but
what we are comparing it to . . . dammit, Toriman, stop grinning at me
"Sorry, Limpkin." But he kept his grin.
"The land is destitute; the collections of hovels that we call towns and
cities are virtually ruled by juvenile gangs and vice lords; industry, such as
it is, has maintained a steady 2.8 -- 2.6% annual decline." He shot a frigid
glance at Toriman. "And foreign wars ravage our fields, destroy our finest
men, and bleed the state treasury white."
"Why?"
"What?"
"I asked, why haven't these faults, which I have already outlined (so
you can see I am not a total dunce), been corrected by your Office?"