"Christopher Stasheff - Rogue Wizard 02 - Wizard in Mind" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

welfare of his people. They gather every bit of surplus grain into royal
granaries, yes-but the people are fed from those granaries, and clothed from the
cotton and linen produced by the corps of king's weavers."
"So every facet of life is governed and everything is taken from the people, but
everything is given to them, too-at least, everything they need," Magnus mused.
"It is. In sum, only fifteen percent of the wealth goes to support the luxury of
the king and his administrators."
"Scarcely excessive," Magnus said in exasperation. "I can hardly call that
oppressive. Don't you have anything more promising?"
"Searching," Herkimer told him, and the card ruffle sounded again as the screen
filled with dancing points of light. Magnus sat back, feeling nervous and edgy,
then wondered why he should be so dismayed to find two societies that didn't
need his help.
But he didn't have any other purpose in life-his family could take care of
themselves and their home planet, Gramarye, quite nicely without him-and he had
already given up on falling in love and devoting his life to a wife and
children. He was only twentyone, but had already had some bad experiences with
women and romance-some very bad, and none very good. What else was a rich young
man supposed to do with his time? Well, not rich, exactly-but he had a spaceship
(a guilt offering from the really rich relatives) and could make as much money
as he needed whenever he needed-make it literally, being a wizard. Well, not a
real wizard, of course-he couldn't work real magic-but he was tremendously
gifted in telepathy, telekinesis, and other powers of extrasensory perception.
Of course, he could have devoted his life to building up as great a fortune as
his relatives had-but that seemed pointless, somehow, without anyone else to
spend it on, and a rather unfair use of his gifts. His brief experience with
SCENT, and his rebellion against it, had given him a solid feeling of
satisfaction at helping an oppressed serf class who really needed liberating. He
had been looking forward to that feeling of elation again-perhaps even looking
forward to the strife and suffering that produced it. He wondered if, somewhere
deep, he secretly believed he deserved punishing.
"This would be considerably easier," said Herkimer, "if you would also allow me
to investigate planets that currently have SCENT projects under way."
Magnus shook his head. "Why waste time and effort when someone else is already
working to free them?" Besides, he found himself unwilling to oppose his
father's organization. On the last planet, when he had seen for himself that
what the SCENT agents were doing was wrong-or rather, that they were doing wrong
things in order to accomplish something right it had been another matter; he had
felt the need to step forward and take a stand to protect good people whom the
SCENT agents were willing to abandon. But deliberately landing on a SCENT planet
with the intent to upset what they were doing was another matter entirely. "No,
there is no need to duplicate effort."
"As you wish," Herkimer said, with a tone of resignation that made Magnus long
for the good old days when robots were unable to mimic emotions. "Your next



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