"Tom Purdom-Research Project" - читать интересную книгу автора (Purdom Tom)

activity?
"Is it our fault they're still sitting on their home planet killing each other?" the Senior Fabricator orated.
"They'd still be murdering each other on their own planet if we had come here a hundred years from
now."
Etc.
At one point, the Senior Fabricator even ordered the latest human news-collage from the information
system and tried to add a little visual showmanship to his speech. Harap-If pressed the button that turned
her hammock in the appropriate direction and stared with great intentness at scenes she had watched a
hundred times. Save Mars demonstrators marched through the streets of Berlin and Tokyo. A New
York media guru presented an update on the position of the Titanic.
For the Senior Fabricator it was our attitude toward the Titanic that provided the final proof we
couldn't be trusted. All our newscasts made it clear we believed he and his colleagues would actually
slam an artificial comet into Earth and kill the entire human population. If we thought they would do
something like that, what kind of actions would we be willing to take against them?
***


The left hand screen offers Jinny a description of the ifli project the human news media had dubbed the
"Titanic." An orbital diagram depicts the long spiral the giant mountain of ice was supposed to describe as
it traveled around the sun on a path that connected the rings of Jupiter with the surface of Mars. Two
arrows indicate the points where it would have intersected the orbit of the Earth. Jinny brushes the
interruption away with an irritable wave of her left hand.
***


I think it's fair to say that Harap-If's attitude toward us wasn't much more benign than the Senior
Fabricator's. From her viewpoint, there was something basically incomprehensible about beings who
killed each other by the millions and became upset because someone was turning a cold, lifeless world
into a place where living things could flourish. She probably wouldn't have hesitated for a minute if the
Senior Fabricator and his colleagues had come up with something less devastating.
Postri-Dem always insisted she had been appalled when they had told her they wanted to build a
gigantic broadband electronic jammer and place it in Earth orbit. All her political instincts told her the
Device would have consequences no one could imagine.
The Senior Fabricator wanted to launch the jammer toward Earth orbit as soon as the meeting ended.
The Chosen Presider would have let us dither for another year if we'd wanted to, but she had to deal
with the political realities. I don't know how she decided the committee would agree we could have
another eight days, but everybody at the meeting accepted the figure as soon as she suggested it.
Did she think we should receive a warning? As far as I can tell, she didn't even consider the idea. The
Senior Fabricator insisted he couldn't vouch for the safety of the Device if we learned about it before they
placed it in position. And what would happen if they tried and failed? We might be weaker than they
were technologically, but there were seven billion of us and we controlled the resources of an entire
planet. Once we made up our minds to fight, we could probably overwhelm their electronic defense
systems merely by throwing hundreds of missiles at them.
Stridi-If was one of the people who was attending the meeting by screenlink. Her final orders from the
Chosen Presider were as contradictory as most diplomatic instructions. Every word Stridi-If uttered in
our presence was supposed to underline the fact that her superiors were becoming dangerously impatient
-- but we must receive no indication our civilization would be reduced to a pre-electronic level if we
didn't make up our minds in eight days. Postri-Dem was supposed to drop a few hints into his
discussions with me, in addition -- if they could convince someone like Postri-Dem he should forget his
obsessions for a few moments.