"Hamilton, Peter F - Softlight Sins" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

moodiness; with knowing relatives who had turned a blind eye.
Douglas fully expected to lose the case. The people of Europe were
achingly tired of psychopaths and terrorists and ideology warriors and
street gangs. The death penalty had been reintroduced six years
previously, the Federal Assembly finally bowing to enormous pressure from
the electorate. The jury found Adrian guilty on three charges of murder.
He should have been given a painless lethal injection. But with
providential coincidence Dr Elliot announced Softlight was ready, and
Douglas had asked judge Hayward to consider Adrian as an appropriate
subject for the treatment. Judge Hayward agreed.
Adrian Reynolds was standing by the window wall, a tall skinny young man,
with a weak chin, puffy cheeks, his dark mousy hair lying lank over his
ears. One of the Institute's baggy green overalls hung loosely from his
body.
He turned when Douglas came in, then dropped his eyes. "They want me dead,
don't they?"
Douglas realised the gate and the mob were just visible from the room.
"They don't know what they want." It was true enough. TRUE JUSTICE thought
Softlight was a liberal/scientific cop out, allowing criminals to escape
punishment once again. LIFE! denounced it as a living death, court
sanctioned zombiism. The only thing they had in common was their
opposition to it.
"Is my will sorted out?" Adrian asked.
"Yes, half to Barnardo's, half to the RSPCC."
"There's not very much."
"Every little helps." Douglas was having trouble keeping his voice level.
If people could just see him like this, see that he cares. He doesn't
deserve Softlight. Maybe I should be on the other side of the gate, join
in the chanting. If only it wasn't so utterly futile.
"They asked me if I wanted a priest," Adrian said. "Last rites and all
that crap. I said no. I said if there was a God then he wouldn't have made
my father."
Douglas half smiled. "You said that to the Institute chaplain?"
Adrian gave a fast wild grin. "No." The humour faded. "Shall we go now? I
don't think there's much point in dragging it out any longer."

Officially it was laboratory complex seven. But Douglas knew the Institute
staff had taken to calling it the Light Chamber; and the press had somehow
got hold of that title. It resembled a dental surgery, with a bulky
hydraulic chair in the middle of the floor, a glass-topped desk, several
cabinets of electronic equipment, and two voice-activated computer
terminals. The Softlight imprinter was a triple-segment metal arm standing
next to the chair; it ended in a bulbous plastic strip moulded to fit over
the eyes like an optician's mask.
Judge Theresa Hayward was sitting behind the desk when Douglas walked in.
She was sixty years old, her oval sun-browned face heavily wrinkled,
exacerbated by her frown. During the trial Douglas had found her to have
an astute mind, in court she was scrupulously impartial, and very aware of
the political undertones of the case.
Harvey Boden, the Court Prosecution Officer, was studying a plasma screen