"James P. Hogan - Giants 4 - Entoverse" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hogan James P)

bands spread at intervals through the parade came to the front as they
entered, massing behind banners carrying the device of a purple spiral in a
black circle on a red ground.
The focus of all the activity was a figure waiting behind the speaker's
rostrum atop the steps facing the square, backed by a huge, hanging sign
showing the purple spiral. As soon as the noise of the bands ceased, he
launched into his harangue. His name was Ayultha. He wore a dark blue tunic
with a purple cloak, and his face had a fierce, intense look, accentuated by
heavy, dark brows and a short beard, which he directed this way and that at
the crowd with sharp motions of his head as he spoke, punctuating his words
with abrupt gestures of appeal and frequent drivings of a fist into the other
palm. His amplified voice boomed across the sea of eager faces to sustained
outbursts of roared approval.
"Was it not we who believed in the Ganymeans? Was it not we who trusted
them and came with them across light-years of space, willing to join their
culture and learn their ways? It was the Terrans who spurned their offer and
chose to go their own way." A pause, with appealing looks to left and right,
and a dramatic lowering of voice at the crucial point. "Perhaps the Cerians
saw more even in those early days than we credited them for." A sudden rise to
crescendo. "It was not them who were betrayed!"
Cries of outrage; shakings of fists. The speaker waited, glaring, until
the noise abated.
"I say again, betrayed! There was an agreement -- a solemn covenant
honored by us not just through a hundred years, not through centuries, even,
but for millennia!" He was referring to the surveillance watch that had been
kept over the developing Earth, which the Thuriens had entrusted to the
Jevlenese. "We performed our duties faithfully. We fulfilled our obligation."
Another pause. Expectations were almost audible with the buildup of tension.
Then, the explosive release: "The Ganymeans broke that covenant!"
Thunderous ovation, unfurlings of banners, waves of upthrust hands.
In the foreground to one side of the image, watching from inside the
Barusi Civic Center, stood several more Ganymeans: angular, gray-hued, eight-
foot-tall figures, with lengthened, narrowish heads compared to the vaulted
human cranium, and protruding lower faces with skulls elongated behind. The
nearest, whose name was Monchar, swung around to look out at the two Ganymeans
watching from Shiban. Monchar had been second-in-command of the Shapieron
mission that Garuth had led.
"But he's completely distorting what happened!" Monchar protested. "Yes,
in the end the Thuriens opened a dialogue with Earth directly. But that was
only after things they knew to be fact contradicted what the Jevlenese were
telling them. The Jevlenese had been lying for centuries. They systematically
falsified their reporting!"
"The Thuriens were being betrayed long before they thought to question
anything," one of the other Ganymeans said.
Monchar motioned with an arm to indicate the crowd outside. "But those
people down there know all this. They have been acquainted with the facts. How
can they react like this to what he's telling them? Don't they possess any
critical faculties at all?"
"I think we're still a long way from comprehending the human ability to
see and hear what they want to," another Ganymean replied. "Facts don't come