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

"Thank you, sir," said Hoddan.
"There's no question about the crime," observed the am-bassador, "or that it is primarily political. You proposed to
improve a technical process in a society which considers itself beyond improvement. If you'd succeeded, the idea of
change would have spread, people now poor would have gotten rich, people now rich would have gotten poor, and
you'd have done what all governments are established to prevent. So you'll never be able to walk the streets of this
planet again in safety. You've scared people."
"Yes, sir," said Hoddan. It's been an unpleasant surprise to them, to be scared."
The ambassador put the tips of his fingers together.
"Do you realize," he asked, "that the whole purpose of civilization is to take the surprises out of life, so one can be
bored to death? That a culture in which nothing un-expected ever happens is in what is called its 'golden age?" That
when nobody can even imagine anything happening unexpectedly, that they later fondly refer to that period as the
'good old days?""
"I hadn't thought of it in just those words, sir."
"It is one of the most-avoided facts of life," said the ambassador. "Government, in the local or planetary sense of
the word, is an organization for the suppression of ad-venture. Taxes are, in part, the insurance premiums one pays for
protection against the unpredictable. And your act has been'an offense against everything that is the founda-tion of a
stable, orderly and damnably tedious way of lifeтАФ against civilization, in fact."
Hoddan frowned.
"Yet, you've granted me asylum."
"Naturally!" said the ambassador. "The Diplomatic Service works for the welfare of humanity. That doesn't mean
stuffi-ness. A golden age in any civilization is always followed by collapse. In ancient days savages came and camped
outside the walls of super-civilized towns. They were unwashed, unmannerly, and unsanitary. Super-civilized people
refused even to think about them! So presently the savages stormed the city walls and another civilization went up in
flames."
"But now," objected Hoddan," there are no savages."
"They invent themselves," the ambassador told him. "My point is that the Diplomatic Service cherishes individuals
and causes which battle stuffiness and compacency and golden ages and monstrous things like that. Not thieves, of
course. They're degradation, like body-lice. But rebels and crackpots and revolutionaries who prevent hardening of the
arteries of commerce and furnish wholesome exercise to the body politic тАФthey're worth cherishing!"
"I think I see, sir," said Hoddan.
"I hope you do," said the ambassador. "My action on your
behalf is pure diplomatic policy. To encourage the dissatisfied
is to insure against the menace of universal satisfaction.
Walden is in a bad way. You are the most encouraging
thing that has happened here in a long time. And you're not
a native." '
"No-o-o," agreed Hoddan. "I come from Zan."
"Never mind." The ambassador turned to a stellar atlas. "Consider yourself a good symptom, and valued as such. If
you could start a contagion, you'd be doing a service to your fellow citizens. Savages can always invent themselves.
But enough . . . let us set about your affairs." He consulted the atlas. "Where would you like to go, since you must
leave Walden?"
"Not too far, Sir."
"The girl, eh?" The ambassador did not smile. He ran his finger down a page. "The nearest inhabited worlds are
Krim and Darth. Krim is a place of lively commercial ac-tivity, where an electronics engineer should easily find
em-ployment. It is said to be progressive and there is much organized research."
"I wouldn't want to be a kept engineer, sir," said Hoddan apologetically. "I'd ratherтАФwellтАФputter on my own."
"Impractical, but sensible," commented the ambassador. He turned a page. "There's Darth. Its social system is
practi-cally feudal. It's technically backward. There's a landing-grid, but space-exports are skins and metal ingots and
practi-cally nothing else. There is no broadcast power. Strangers find the local customs difficult. There is no town
larger