"John Rankine - Dag Fletcher 1 - The Ring of Garamas" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankine John)

by the Officer Commanding the Rim Task Force of which Varley's squadron was a part.
****
What had begun as a prudent exercise to regularize Yola's cover, was continuing because Fletcher was
getting interested in the Garamasian scene. She knew the Kristinobyl that the tourist did not see and it
gave him a new slant on the national character.

It was another proof of the basic truth that the longer you could defer judgement, the more likely it was to
be accurate. But it also brought in another bit of philosophic lore in that the more sides of a question you
see, the less likely you are to form any opinion at all.

Fletcher was used to making snap appraisals of groups that he saw briefly and would not see again. The
silvery people of Fingalna were immediately sympathetic, the bulky jingoists of Sabazius were not.
Maybe if he had done a study in depth, he would have found that the latter were way ahead on soul.

Here, he had been ready to write the planet off, while it caught up with his preconceived notions of a
cultured state; but Yola opened his eyes.

Listening to voices and following the cut and thrust of argument, he began to see them as people in their
own right and not as an odd variant of what the true flower of homo sapiens should be. Even by Earth
standard, the women in Yola's circle had a certain kinky charm. Hands and feet were very slender and
elegant. Hair was jet black, very fine with a shiny liquid flow when they moved. Dress was always plain
and severe as a uniform as though they knew they were on sufferance in an all-male reservation; but
perfume was an extension of personality. Every last one was her own alchemist, brewing up olfactory
harmonies for the noa noa.

Technically, they were abreast of most planets on the Rim. One single feature would give them a niche in
the hall of fame. For many years they had been using an unlimited power source which was brilliant in its
simplicity.

A continuous land mass girdled the planet on its equatorial line. With incredible labour, a continuous
conductor had been built to ring the globe smack on its zero latitude. Planet spin, combined with a daily
drift of magnetic field back and forward across the line, generated more energy than could be used in the
foreseeable future, at a give-away price.

It was an exercise that had suited the national character. Ant-like labour gangs had toiled through deserts,
lakes, mountain ridges and every obstacle that an engineering project ever met.

Ironically, it had broken the government that conceived the plan and forced it through. A backlash
reaction from the patient masses that had borne the heat of the day and suffered untold, unrecorded
casualties had toppled the junta to put in a short-lived popular front.

This flowering of genius exhausted the tree. No comparable development followed in any field. Except
for the paradox of having the cheapest power system in the galaxy Garamas remained three-fifths
backward. Social organization trailed badly. It was a feudal system with neon-lit battlements and a power
drive on the iron maiden.

Yola knew all about the Ring. Its administration absorbed half the graduates of the Polytech. She had
specialized in science courses which would lead automatically to a junior post in the organization. There,
she would be breaking new ground for the female faction.