"Spider Robinson - Ambiguous Oracle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

JIMMY WILLIAMS had been a cynic for as many of his thirteen years as he could remember.
Not that most children aren't born with a healthy and functional "Built-In Shit Detector," the sine qua
non of cynicism in its purest form. But by the time they reach puberty, most children have been
successfully trained in self-deception by their elders, and have learned that although a B.I.S.D. can never
be shut off, it can be easily ignored with the aid of certain liquids, vapors and pills.
Jimmy, however, was .plenty tough. It would be years before the bitter pain of being a one-eyed man
in the country of the blind succeeded in blinding his eyes, gagging his mouth, and mortally wounding his
self-respect. At the moment, the impassioned words of a larger-than-life senatorial candidate on the
Screen filled him with an amused contempt.
"DEMOCRACY," boomed the phosphor-dot phantom, "IS RUN BY ALL, YET RUN DOWN
BY MANY. THE SUBLIMELY OBVIOUS TRUTH THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL
APPARENTLY IS NOT OBVIOUS ENOUGH FOR SOME. SEEING THEMSELVES AS A SORT
OF POLITICAL ELITE, THESE ARROGANT ARTISTS OF ANARCHY WOULD PLACE
THEMSELVES AND THEIR OWN OPINIONS ABOVE THE SACRED WILL OF THE PEOPLE,
THE
VIRILE, DRIVING FORCE WHICH DISTILLED THIS GREAT NATION OF OURS FROM
THE CHAOS WHICH HAD GONE BEFORE. AS FOR . . ." Jimmy turned down the volume. ". . .
myself, I can see no reason why I should be other than honored and proud to take the will of the people
for my own, and subordinate my desires to those of the body politic. Indeed, it would be a rare . . ."
Jimmy's amusement and contempt were gradually giving way to an impatient irritability. The politician
had ceased to be funny; was becoming odious.
"Screw it," he said aloud, and the Screen vanished, was replaced by the far wall of Jimmy's
bedroom. He regarded the wall for a moment, wishing for the thousandth time that he could put up some
sort of poster-type decoration on its blank grey surface without having to get up and remove the stuff
every time he wanted to use the Screen. He had heard that next year's model would not be subject to
molecular distortion as was this oneтАФbut he had also heard that Prosperity was Just Around the Corner.
Jimmy believed only in what he could seeтАФand damned little of that.
Right now, Jimmy wanted desperately to believe that his father would be coming home tonight.
Sergeant William's Tac Squad had been called up at dawn to assist in quelling a riot in the Wyandanch
Ghetto, involving some two or three thousand people, and an hour's monitoring of the newscasts had
brought Jimmy nothing with any more calories than the democracy-loving politician.
That was bad.
Jimmy loved his father quite a bit, a fact which irritated him immensely whenever he became
consciously aware of it. It annoyed him to love someone who was quite capable of ending an argument
with, "There is no reason. Do it my way," particularly because experience had shown him that when his
father said that, he nearly always turned out to be right. A fiat was galling; a correct and prudent fiat was
maddening.
Perhaps what annoyed him the most, however, was that his father would accept, at times, the fiats of
othersтАФwhich seemed to Jimmy a kind of betrayal. The time Sgt. Williams had knuckled under to a
meddling neighbor and a Town Zoning Board, obeying the order of the latter to tear down Jimmy's
"nonconforming" tree-house, had nearly destroyed their relationship. The boy still did not understand his
father's concept of duty, but on the night six months later when he had come home to find his father
sprawled whitefaced on the living-room carpet, sobbing to Jimmy's mother of the slaughter he had done
that day in society's name, Jimmy had learned that whatever the nature of this weakness, it was beyond
his father's ability to fight.
Jimmy was determined to be tougher. Society gave him a pain behind the lap.
Democracy, he thought, remembering the politician who had annoyed him. How can something
sound so good and work out so lame? The lad had recognized the politician's words as bullshit by their
sound alone, but he could not have answered them as arguments. He had audited a reasonable number of
Eyecon courses for a boy of his age, but he was too young to take Political Rhetoric just yet, and he had