"Ringo, John - Council Wars 1 - There Will Be Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

rate is crashing and we are stagnating and falling into sloth and lotus-eating.
We're becoming less and less human every year and if we don't do something,
there may be no humans left. A crisis is upon us and you stick your head in the
sand and prattle about 'maternal genetics'!"
"It's not prattle, Bowman, it's science," Sheida said. "But logic seems to have
left you behind. You want to make people 'work,' but at work that has never,
historically, enhanced reproduction, work that has, in fact, tended to detract
from it. I have to ask: can all of this work be done by those who have chosen to
Change?"
"The program may necessitate some adjustments to the ChangeЕ fad," Paul said
with a distasteful expression.
"Oh, ho!" Cantor said. "Now we come to it! You want me to be a nice little
humanoform and work in aЕ what's the word, a place where things were made?"
"Factory," Sheida supplied.
"You want me to be a nice little humanoform 'working' in a factory instead of
what I choose to be!" He stood up, kicked back the chair and transformed.
Suddenly, in the place of the large, hirsute "man," a four-meter-high grizzly
bear reared.
"I doooo' 'hin' soooo," the grizzly growled. He leaned forward and rested on the
table, his long claws gouging the natural wood of the tabletop, as his head
transformed back to human. "I'm not giving up my form for you, Paul Bowman! Nor
am I going to force any of the Changed!"
Ishtar caught Sheida's eye and threw a Whisper into her ear. "Makes me glad he's
not a dragon."
"I think we're done here," Ungphakorn said. "The Finn isssn't going to ssside
with you, if he even bothersss to find out what the dissscusssion wasss about.
The Demon might, but only for the chaosss that would ensssue. Ssso you need
ssseven to implement."
"Nine," Sheida said. "Revocation of the Change rules will require nine; they
were implemented with eight votes. Actually, one of them was implemented with a
unanimous vote of Council so you'll have to get one of the Hacks to agree to
override that one."
"Which was?" Ishtar asked.
" 'No revocation of Change under conditions in which the Changed would be placed
in mortal peril.' So you'd have to recover all the mer-people, delphinos,
whalers and all the rest before you could change them back. And the logistics of
changing back all the mer and delphinos, alone, boggles the mind; it requires
human intervention because of the risk factors. And then there would be the
genetic flaws that would creep in during the process. Just what we need: more
wild gene faults."
"Not to mention make sssure no one wasss flying when you took away their
ability," Ungphakorn added dryly. "You don't have enough votesss to implement,
Bowman, even with the Demon. Give it up."
"Never," Paul said, getting to his feet. "The future of humanity is in our
hands, and you are throwing it away. For fantasies of a race of maternal females
arising from nowhere andЕ" he stopped and just gestured wordlessly at the
quetzacoatl.
"I do believe that you're looking for the word 'abomination,' " Ishtar said
lightly. "Aren't you?"
"Yes!" Chansa snapped, his patience apparently gone. "Abominations! Dragons and