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

Limpkin was getting progressively more irritated. "We have tried. Didn't
I tell you that? The cellars of the Office are glutted with copies of orders
and directives to the Government, our own regional offices, to the people
themselves; some of these orders are more than eighty years old! We've sent
out every kind of order, used every kind of appeal, threat, or tactic that we
could think of, but the letters go out and that is the last we ever hear of
them. Send a man out and he comes back empty-handed or beaten to a pulp,
depending upon the temperament of the people.
"Ah, the people! The bloody-damn, sacred people! Tell them that their
very lives depend upon a dam or upon the repair of a city's walls and it's
like talking down an empty well. It's almost as if the men were less than men,
as if" -- Limpkin lifted an eybrow -- "they had lost something." Toriman
smiled briefly, his face a harlequin mask of shifting light. "All right then,
once again we have come upon this fact. Now what?"
"First of all, my agitated friend, perhaps we should qualify ourselves
by saying that this essence has not really been lost, but rather has been, ah,
anesthetized by three millennia of simple hell. Acceptable?"
"It seems to be your conversation."
"All right, we don't have to go traipsing off into the Barrens or some
other objectionable place looking for enchanted vials with this thing in them.
All we have to do is awaken it in the citizenry."
"Ah, there you are. Just what my Office and its counterparts have been
trying for years to find. With all due respect, General, you have told me
nothing that I did not already suspect, and if you can offer nothing more
original and concrete than these philosophical or psychological meanderings,
then we can both count the night a failure."
Toriman took a puff on his cigar and then suddenly crushed it in an
ebony ash tray on the desk. "Yes, quite right. We have had enough of cigar and
brandy talk. Enjoyable, but time consuming." The General's voice shifted
emphasis subtly. He heaved himself out of the chair and vanished into the
shadows past the fireplace. He was back in a second, towing a wheeled frame
with a map strung between its uprights. He pushed the chart in front of the
fire so that the translucent vellum took on a three-dimensional aspect when
viewed from the front.
Limpkin studied the map. To his right in the east was the Sea and the
coastline of the World. He could recognize the Maritime Republics, New Svald,
and the Dresau Islands off the Talbight Estuary. Above and below this, the
seacoast was pockmarked by minor nations with progressively unfamiliar names
(some of which, such as Truden and Dorn, he had previously thought of as
existing only in children's tales).
He caught a reference point, the free city of Enador to the south of the
Talbight Estuary, and followed the Donigol Trace westward until it reached the
southern extremity of the Caroline. Around his homeland were her neighbors and
their sister nations; very comforting, but the eye could not help but notice
that they comprised only a very small portion of the map.
Ignoring the smile of satisfaction that Toriman was wearing, Limpkin got
up and unabashedly gawked at the illuminated chart. The fire behind it made it
look as if the World were floating on a sea of molten glass. The cartography
was flawless; mountains appeared to be in relief and the rivers seemed to flow
with turquoise water. Many of the countries had their national standards