"Christopher Stasheff - Warlock 09 - The Warlocks Companion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stasheff Christopher)

"Divorce?" Marcia bleated, horrified. "Jose! How could you even think of such a
thing?''
Jose just stared at her.
 "Just because I'm a little snappishтАж Jose! You don't mean it!"
"ButтАж but I thoughtтАж You said you wanted to beтАж"
"Don't you dare!"
"A free and independent entity!" Jose bawled.
"That's the Declaration , not me.' How could you possibly think I would want a
divorce?"
"But that's what it means, to be independentтАж"
"Oh, that's just a word!" Marcia leaned forward to squeeze his hand. "I mean, can't I
even have a little light conversation with you in the mornings?"
The aircar grounded, and its grille announced, "Eight-Mile and Adams."
"Don't you even think about a divorce!" Marcia commanded, darting a quick kiss at
him. "Have a good day, darling."



Well, that was something of a tall order. How could Jose "have a good day" when it
had started with such turmoil? He sighed philosophically, then sighed again to try to get
his emotions under control, and wondered whether he'd ever be able to tell when
Marcia was serious, and when she was just talking.
But he couldn't help thinking about it. Every time he tried to do something else, the
argument came back to him. He heaved a sigh and took his hands off the keyboard,
closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair, trying to think the experience through
so he could put it to rest.
The Declaration. That was it. That had been the keystone of Marcia's argument, the
phrases "that all people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights"
and "these colonies ought to be free and independent states." He knew she'd been
misquoting, twisting Jefferson's words to suit her argument. Not that it mattered; when
she was in one of those moods, she'd use any ammunition that was handy. Still, it
might help him to get the argument out of his mind if he could see the phrases the way
Jefferson had written them, and reassure himself that he wasn't really violating the
Declaration's principles by the way he was living.
So he cleared his screen and punched in the code for the central library's
database, feeling like an idiotтАФhe knew very well that he was living according to his
own ideals, and knew he was letting his weakness show by having to prove it to
himself.
The screen lit up with the library's logo and a request for a request. Jose punched
in "The Declaration of Independence" with a feeling of relief; at least something was
being reasonable.
The political entity that the Declaration had founded still existed, though it had
become so completely involved in the complex of nations that it was one part of a
united Gestalt, as were all the other nations of Terra. But the words that had begun that
union still rang down the corridors of human history, firing youthful minds with zeal and
exalting older spiritsтАФand, through them, had in turn become the basis of the Terran
Union.
 Then it jumped at him from the screen, a full facsimile of the document itself, but he
knew that each letter was also in binary. Not that he would dream of moving sentences
around in it.