"Christopher Stasheff - Rogue Wizard 07 - A Wizard In Midgard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

this. But why take such a name for yourself?"
The question brought a sudden wave of longing for his nice, safe spaceship
lounge, and a memory of Herkimer saying, only hours before, "Why do you insist
on using that abominable alias when you go planetside to start a revolution,
Magnus?"
Magnus shrugged. "You never can tell when there are going to be secret agents
around, from SCENT or some other Terran government agency. I'd just as soon they
didn't recognize me by name."
"Surely the name of Gar Pike must be almost as famous as that of d'Armand, by
now."
"Not to SCENT, fortunately-unless they've had agents on every planet I've
visited." Magnus's mouth tightened at the thought of his own brief stint as a
SCENT agent, and his disillusionment with their methods. His father, Rod
Gallowglass, whose real name was Rodney d'Armand, was one of the most famous
agents of the Society for the Conversion of Extraterrestrial Nascent
Totalitarianisms--famous because he had discovered Magnus's home planet of
Gramarye with its potentially explosive population of espers. For three decades
now, he had been holding the planet secure against the schemes and plots of two
futurian organizations, one trying to subvert Gramarye to some form of
totalitarian government so that its telepaths would be at the service ofits
interstellar dictatorship, the other trying to subvert the planet to anarchy so
that the telepaths would help spread its unrealistically idealistic form of
chaos throughout the human-colonized planets. Rod Gallowglass had
short-circuited all their schemes with the help of his native-born wife
Gwendylon and their four children-three, since Magnus had taken to the stars,
unable to accept his father's imposing of democracy on a people who might not
want it. He had joined SCENT under an assumed name, become even more
disenchanted with its methods than with his father's, and gone off on his own to
bring about social change in a way about which he could feel rightwhich meant
that he sought out planets where the majority were really miserably oppressed,
and the only solution was revolution.
So here he was, talking to another miserable one, and trying to explain, "The
name was given me as much as I chose it." He realized he had better think of
himself as "Gar Pike" for the rest of his time on this planet.
Greta's wan smile warmed a little. "Don't you ever talk like a proud lord,
though!"
"Is he all right?" asked another woman anxiously, coming up to them. Gar looked
down and saw she wasn't even five feet tall.
"He seems well enough," Greta answered her. "He walks fairly straight, and his
limp's almost gone."
"I'm past the worst of it," Gar confirmed. .
"This is Rega." Greta gestured to the smaller woman. "Honored to meet you,
Rega."
Rega smiled up at him. "No wonder the overseers set about you so hard, with your
courtly ways. Where did you esape from, lad? I know Groi says you're from far
away, but that can't be, can it?"
Groi, Gar decided, must be the small man who had talked to him out in the field.
"It's quite true. I wanted to see something of the world before I settled down."
"Seen enough yet?" Greta asked with a sardonic smile. They were very surprised
when Gar said, "Too much--but not enough."