"Murray Leinster - The Pirates of Zan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

routine of his Me, the adjustee is resentful. The richer he is and the more satisfactory he considers his life, the more
resentful he is at any change, however minute. And of all the changes which offend people, changes which require
them to think are most disliked. The high brass on the-Power Board con-sidered that everything was moving
smoothly. There was no need to consider new devices. Hoddan's drawings and plans had simply never been bothered
with, because there was no recognized need for them. And when he forced acknowledgement that his receptor
worked, the unwelcome demonstration'was highly offensive in itself. It was natural, it was inevitable, it should Tiave
been infallibly certain that any possible excuse for not thinking about the receptor would be seized upon. And a single
dead man found near the operating demonstrator . . . Now, if one assumed that the demonstrator had killed him, why
one could react emotionally, feel vast indignation, frantically command that the device and its inventor be suppressed
togetherтАФand then go on living happily without doing any thinking or making any other change in anything at all.
Hoddan was appalled. Now that it had happened, he cbuld see that it had to. The world of Walden was at the very
peak of human culture. It had arrived at so splendid a plane of civilization that nobody could imagine any
im-provement; unless a better tranquilizer could be designed to make the boredom more endurable. Nobody can want
anything he doesn't know exists, or that he can't imagine to exist. On Walden nobody wanted anything, unless it was
relief from the tedium of ultra-civilized life. Hoddan's elec-tronic device did not fill a human need only a technical-one.
It had therefore, no value that would make anybody hospit-able to it.
And Hoddan would spend his life in jail for failing to recognize this fact soon enough.
He revolted immediately. He wanted something! He wanted out. He set about designing his escape. He put his mind
to work on the problem, simply and directly. And this time he would not make the mistake of furnishing other people
with what they did not want. He took the view that he must seem, at least, to give his captors and jailers andтАФas he
saw itтАФhis persecutors, what they wanted.
 They would be pleased to have .him dead, provided their consciences were clear. He built on that as a foundation.
Very shortly before nightfall he performed certain cryptic actions. He unraveled threads from his shirt and put them
aside. There would be a vision-lens in the ceiling of his cell, and somebody would certainly notice what he did. He
turned on a light. He put the threads in his mouth, set fire to his mattress, and lay down calmy upon it. The mattress
was of excellent quality. It would smell very badly as it smoldered.
It did. Lying flat, he kicked convulsively for a few seconds. He looked like somebody who had taken poison. Then
he waited.
It was a long time before his jailer came down the cor-ridor, dragging a fire hose. Hoddan had been correct in
assuming that he was watched. His actions had been those of a man who'd anticipated a possible need to commit
suicide, and who'd had poison in a part of his shirt for convenience. The jailer did not hurry, because if the in-ventor
of a death ray committed suicide, everybody would feel better. Hoddan had been allowed a reasonable time in which
to die.
He seemed impressively dead when the jailer opened his cell door, dragged him out, removed the so-far-unscorched
other furniture, and set up the fire hose to make an aerosol fog which would put out the fire. He went back to the
corridor to wait for the fire to be extinguished.
Hoddan crowned him with a stool, feeling an unexpected satisfaction in the act. The jailer collapsed.
He did not carry keys. The system was for him to be let out of this corridor by a guard outside. Hoddan took the fire
hose. He turned its nozzle back to make a stream
instead of a mist. Water came out at four hundred pounds pressure. He smashed open the corridor door with it. He
strolled through and bowled over a startled guard with the same stream. He took the guard's stun-pistol. He washed
open another door leading to the courtyard. He marched out, washed down two guards who sighted him, and took the
trouble to flush them across the pavement until they wedged in a drain opening. Then he thoughtfully reset the hose
to fill the courtyard with fog, climbed into the driver's seat of a parked truck, started it, and smashed through the
gateway to the street outside. Behind him, the courtyard filled with dense white mist.
He was free, but only temporarily. Around him lay the capital city of WaldenтАФthe highest civilization in this part of
the galaxy. Trees lined its ways. Towers rose splendidly toward the skies, with thousands of less ambitious structures
in between. There were open squares and parkways and malls, and it did not smell like a city at all. But he wasn't loose
three minutes before the communicator in the truck 5 squawked the all-police alarm for him.
It was to be expected. All the city would shortly be one enormous man trap, set to catch Bron Hoddan. There was