"Modesitt,.L.E.-.Ecolitian.Enigma.v1.1" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

Nathaniel wondered. Did he? "You do, and I'm going with you."

"So long as you keep up your lessons on what you don't know about Accord."

"That's another thing I like about this place." She offered the tentative smile that he always found so enchanting. "The lessons?"
"People take me at my word."

"Not everyone on Accord does. Ecolitans try to. People in Harmony or on the Peninsula are pretty much the same as in the Empire. Maybe a little more open, but it makes sense to trust people at first. Most of the time, anyway."
"That's an odd way of putting it."

"Not really. It's something the Prime emphasizes. I guess every Prime has. It goes with the job. If you distrust people, they pick up on it, and that leads them to distrust you. Since human society is based on trust, and since the greater the reinforced trust, the freer a society can be, it makes sense to create a society where trust is reinforced. That's one of the perpetual conflicts between the Institute and the politicians."

Sylvia raised her eyebrows, gray eyes inquiring. "Politicians want to nail everything down. If there's a murder or a scandal, they immediately want to make another law, conduct another study, do something to prove it isn't their fault. All those laws reduce freedom and trust."
"How does the Institute handle it?"

"We tell the truth. If we don't want to say more, we don't. We try not to mislead."

"That's why you limited my briefing to the actual facts?"
"The Prime was insistent that you not have his speculations or mine. He's worried enough that he wants you as an independent check, and that means that the stakes are high. He's afraid our background may mislead us."

"A definite backhanded compliment." Sylvia's lips quirked. "And what does the Institute do to its own members who violate such high principles?"

"Effectively, either exile or death, depending on the severity of the problem. We impose the same standard on the politicians." Sylvia winced.

"Look, if you want people to trust one another, you have to protect them from those who abuse their trust. Personal profiles indicate most people don't change, and you have to base a society on the most probable patterns. Trying to create formalized exemptions only encourages people to find other ways to abuse trust legally. The Institute has to set and maintain a higher standard. That's part of the reason why we don't engage in politics. That's why an economic study that's a cover still has to be first rate."

"The other parts?" she asked.

"No matter what anyone says, politics doesn't work without compromise. Most people aren't strong enough to not be affected by the continuing pressure of daily compromise. Politicians are generally worse than the average person because they need the adulation, and that makes them more susceptible to ethical compromise and abuse of the public trust. The Institute acts as a brake, partly by example, and partly because the politicians know we reserve the right to protect the public interest. That's why we have to follow the Iron Rules. That's the Ecolitan Enigma-the riddle of how to maintain enough power to ensure ethics, yet not to be corrupted by that power."

"You reserve the perpetual right to overthrow the government? That's worse-"

"No. Not the government. Not the form of government. We reserve the right to remove any politician who abuses public trust or who would narrow the institutional freedoms set forth by the Charter."

"That's worse meddling in politics than running for office." Nathaniel shook his head. "It's happened five times in four centuries. The Institute doesn't like to exercise that power, and every Prime who has done so resigned immediately. Two voluntarily exiled themselves."

"The threat of such a power has to be chilling. I don't know."
"It is chilling," Nathaniel admitted. "It's intended to be. The first post-Secession Prime made the point that government must always serve all the people, not just a handful and not the other way around, and that the Institute would guarantee that balance."

"I still don't know." Sylvia shook her head. "You're right to question. I did at first." Nathaniel hesitated, wondering whether to hit her with the rest of it. He swallowed before he spoke. "There's more."
"More?"

"The Institute reserves the right to act first, as we did on Old Earth." He rushed on, wanting to get it over with. "Look, historically, governments and people are reactive. They have to depend on popular consensus of some sort. That means that when a tyrant or a madman or a system looks evil, they have to wait. It's been the same throughout history. There's this feeling that you can't use applied or deadly force to head off a disaster because you can't absolutely prove there will be a disaster. So . . . Accord couldn't act against the Empire in the Secession until the Empire destroyed the entire planet of Sligo and millions of people. In the Marundan rebellion, the Empire couldn't act until after five million Mareks had been slaughtered in Marunda's processing camps. Yet Marunda had published a manifesto detailing his plans. There was already documentation of over fifty thousand deaths. The Imperial Senate refused to act." Nathaniel shrugged.

"You're telling me that you-the Institute-has the almighty wisdom to predict the future?" Her eyebrows rose.

"Not always. Sometimes. We . . assassinated two dozen radical political operatives being supplied by the Empire on Hernando. It prevented a coup and bloody civil war. The system is regenerating." He shrugged. "It seems to me that doing that was better than military action after thousands were killed."
"That's like playing god."

"Is it? Is it worse to do nothing so that you can claim you are justified to act after thousands or millions die? When even more people die and suffer?"