"Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle - Oath of Fealty" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"Bosses don't think so. They want us alert. Who can be alert just staring at one scene all the time? The math boys worked it out, how many of us, how many TV screens each, probability of trouble-over my head, but it seems to work."
Joe digested that. "Uh-seems to me I'd be more valuable out on the streets. Responding to calls-"
Blake laughed. "After you've been here a year maybe they'll put you where you interact with stockholders. If you work out." The kaleidoscope above continued. A moving beltway, with some kids walking on a balcony above it. Blake touched controls, and the camera zoomed in on the kids. After a moment the kaleidoscope started up again. "Think about it," Blake said. "In Seattle, you were a cop, and out among the civilians. You worried about making good arrests, right? Best way to get promoted."
"Sure-"
"Well, in here it's different." Blake suddenly frowned and set down his cup.
It took Joe Dunhill a moment to realize that Blake was no longer interested in the conversation, and another to see why he was staring. It wasn't the screen at all. A blue light to the side had lit up.
"On the roof," he said, with a question in his voice. Then, with more confidence, "Visitor. How did he get up there?"
Blake played with the controls. The screen jumped with disconnected pictures, flashing views of four square miles of roof: the curtained windows of the Sky Room night club; golfers on the golf course; a view down onto one of the inverted-pyramid shapes
of an air well, plunging down in narrowing steps each one story high and lined with windows. Then a forest of skeletal structures:
a children's playground, empty at the moment, then another jungle gym with a dozen kids hanging like bats. The Olympic swimming pooi, with a wide, shallow children's wading pool just beyond. Baseball diamond. Football field. On the Todos Santos roof was every kind of playground for child or adult.
Then beyond a low fence, an empty area, bags of concrete and piles of wood for forms, cement mixer idle at the moment. The camera zoomed to the mixer. "ID badge," Blake muttered. "Visitor badge, must be stuffed into the cement mixer. What the hell for? And what's he doing up there?" The TV screen flowed across the roof again, searching- "There," cried Joe Dunhill.
"Yeah. I see him. Doesn't seem to be carrying anything. Might have been, though. We'll have to search the roof. Detectors would have picked up anything metal, and there's not a lot worth bombing up there, but we'll have to look anyway."
The figure moved rapidly along the twelve-foot fence between him and the edge. He was hunched over, a caricature of a man sneaking. He found a gap in the fence, hesitated, and moved into
it.
Blake grinned. "Hah! Maybe we won't have to send anyone up after alL He's found the diving board."
"That's not the pool area."
"I know. Sometimes I wonder about Rand. You know about Tony Rand? He's the chief architect for this place. Rand's high board isn't in the pool area."
"~ui?"
"Watch. If he's really a leaper, we won't have to call anyone." Blake touched another button. "Captain, I have the bandit on the roof area. Looks like he's going to dive." Blake fiddled with the knobs. The picture sharpened.


He had been following the fence for thirty minutes, looking for a way to reach the edge. The fence seemed endless, and he wondered if he could climb it, and if there were alarms. Todos Santos was said to be very Big Brother. .
Then he saw the opening. There was a cement mixer nearby and he pushed the visitor badge into it. The badge wasn't his, and told nothing about him, but it was the last possible clue. Maybe they'd find it and maybe not. He moved on, to the gap in the fence.
There was a big sign: WATCH YOUR STEP. He did not smile. His long, unhandsome face was dead calm, as if he had never smiled and never would. He turned into the channel of fencing. It was just wider than his shoulders.
The channel ended in a steel ladder. Through the steps he could see the orange groves and parks far below, then beyond them the tiny shapes of city houses, some with the blue splash of a swimming pool, all looking like miniatures. He pressed his forehead against the cold metal and looked down . . . a fifth of a mile down to the green landscape around Todos Santos. A thousand feet to oblivion.
He climbed the steps. The situation was strange. The steps ended in a long, narrow rectangle. He tested it with his foot. Wood padded with burlap. . . and it shook slightly.
A high-diving board.
He walked out on the board and looked down.
The balconies receded in perspective until they merged with blank wall. The parkiand below was a green blur. A view more mathematical than real, parallel lines meeting at infinity. So here was the end of a dull and thwarted life. He was carrying no identification. After a fall like that they would never know who he was. Let them wonder.
The board bounced as he shifted his weight.


"But-but suppose he jumps?" Joe Dunhill asked.
"Well, we don't advertise it, but there's a net that comes out when he passes the spy-eyes. Then we just collect him and eject him. Let him give his bad publicity to someone else," Blake told him.
"Does this happen all the time? You don't look particularly interested."
"Oh, I'm interested. I've got five bucks in the pool. See that chart?" Blake waved at the far wall, where chalk marks said:
LAUGHING 3
BACKED OUT JUMPED 8
TERRIFIED 7

"That's this quarter's talley. Work it out," said Blake. "The roof of this place is eight miles of sheer cliff. We get every wouldbe suicide west of the Rockies and some from New England and Japan. But the high-diving board is the only access to the edge, and it does have a funny effect on people." Blake frowned and scratched his neck. "He sure looks like a jumper. If he backs out I stand a fair chance to win."
The man stood straddle-legged at the end of the board, brooding above a thousand-foot drop. The picture of melancholy .
until a gust of wind slapped across him, and suddenly he was dancing on one leg and waving his arms.
"Maybe not," Blake said. The jumper was reflexively fighting for his life. The gust died suddenly, and he almost went off the other side of the board. He wound up on hands and knees. He stayed there, gripping the board. Presently he began backing toward the ladder. When he reached the steps he stayed stooped and backed down, placing his feet very carefully.
"Leaper's off, Captain," Blake called.
"Right. Got a detail going after him."
Joe asked, "Some of them laugh?"
"Yeah. It's a funny picture, isn't it? You're going to kill yourself. It's the most powerful statement you can make about the way the world has treated you. That's what Rand says, anyway. And when you finally get there, there's a high-diving board to add ten feet to the drop!"
Joe shook his head, grinning.
"They don't all back out. Once I watched a woman stand up there, take off her overcoat-she wasn't wearing anything under it