"Simon Hawke - Wizard 7 - The Wizard of Camelot" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawke Simon)

granted, as before. And that was how we got into the mess now known as the
Collapse.

It wasn't something that happened overnight, of course. Like a snowball
rolling
down a mountain slope, it had started slowly, growing and gathering momentum
as
it went, until it turned into an avalanche that swept over everything in its
path. The warning signs had been present for years, only they had been
largely
ignored. Even when things began to fall apart, people chose not to believe
it.
One is tempted to lay the blame on governments and multinational
corporations,
but the fact, is that the people, all the people, ultimately shared
responsibility, because we should have been the ones to stop it.

There were those who saw it coming, to be sure, who had seen it coming for
decades, and their numbers had grown considerably in the years immediately
prior
to the Collapse, but unfortunately, they were still not numerous enough to
make
a difference. They had tried to do something and had failed, and their
failure
had led to anger and frustration, which in turn had led to desperation, which
had led to eco-terrorism. That had been merely the first hint of the violence
that would come. My generation had grown up with it, and by the time I'd
reached
my teens, the avalanche was well and truly underway and no one could do
anything
to stop it.

It is with some amusement that I regard the London bobbies these days, with
their return to the traditions of the pre-Collapse period, and their rather
quaint, nostalgically styled uniforms, for in my days with New Scotland Yard,
we
looked less like policemen than like SAS commandos in full battle dress. We
carried not billy clubs and whistles, but fully automatic weapons, and our
uniforms were not blue serge, but molded gray fatigues that were known as
"urban
camo." Our riot helmets made us resemble some outlandish cross between
motorcyclists and astronauts and they were the only way to differentiate us
from
the military troops, aside from the word "POLICE" stenciled across our backs
in
large, black letters.

And, oh, how I despised those bloody helmets! The army knew better man to be
saddled with such a worthless piece of junk. I longed for the simple metal
helmet I had worn when I was in the army, but some idiot bureaucrat had