"Jack Vance - Telek" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

Shorn was faintly smiling. "Well, what do you make of it?"
 "You take an extreme position. It's hardly conceivableтАФ"
"The future is unknown. Almost anything is conceivable. We might become Teleks, all of us.
Unlikely? I think so myself. The Teleks might die out, disappear. Equally unlikely. They've always been
with us, all of history, latent in our midst. What are the probabilities? Something like the present situation,
a few Teleks among the great mass of common people?"
Geskamp nodded. "That's my opinion."
"Picture the future then. What do you see?"
"Nothing extraordinary. I imagine things will move along much as they have been."
"You see no trend, no curve of shifting relationships?"
"The Teleks are an irritation, certainly, but they interfere very little in our lives. In a sense they're an
asset. They spend their money like water; they contribute to the general prosperity." He looked anxiously
into the sky through the gathering dusk. "Their wealth, it's honestly acquired; no matter where they find
those great blocks of metal."
"The metal comes from the moon, from the asteroids, from the outer planets."
Geskamp nodded. "Yes, that's the speculation."
"The metal represents restraint. The Teleks are giving value in return for what they could take."
"Of course. Why shouldn't they give value in return?"
"No reason at all. They should. But nowтАФconsider the trend. At the outset they were ordinary
citizens. They lived by ordinary conventions; they were decent people. After the first congress they made
their fortunes for performing dangerous and unpleasant tasks. Idealism, public service was the keynote.
They identified themselves with all of humanity, and very praiseworthy, too. Now, sixty years later.
Consider the Teleks of today. Is there any pretension to public service? None. They dress differently,
speak differently, live differently. They no longer load ships or clear jungles or build roads; they take an
easier way, which makes less demands on their time. Humanity benefits; they bring us platinum,
palladium, uranium, rhodium, all the precious metals, which they sell at half the old price, and they pour
the money back into circulation." He gestured across the stadium. "And meanwhile the old ones are dying
and the new Teleks have no roots, no connection with common man. They draw ever farther away,
developing a way of living entirely different from ours."
Geskamp said half-truculently, "What do you expect? It's natural, isn't it?"
Shorn put on a patient face. "That's exactly the point I'm trying to make. Consider the trend, the
curve. Where does this 'natural' behavior lead? Always away from common humanity, the old traditions,
always toward an elite-herd situation."
Geskamp rubbed his heavy chin. "I think that you're ... well, making a mountain out of a molehill."
"Do you think so? Consider the stadium, the eviction of the old property-owners. Think of Vernisaw
Knerwig and the revenge they took."
"Nothing was proved," said Geskamp uneasily. What was the fellow up to? Now he was grinning, a
superior sort of grin.
"In your heart, you agree with what I say; but you can't bring yourself to face the factsтАФbecause then
you'd be forced to take a stand. For or against."
Geskamp stared out across the valley, wholly angry, but unable to dispute Shorn's diagnosis. "I don't
see the facts clearly."
"There are only two courses for us. We must either control the Teleks, that is, make them answerable
to human lawтАФor we must eliminate them entirely. In blunt wordsтАФkill them. If we don'tтАФthey become
the masters; we the slaves. It's inevitable."
Geskamp's anger broke surface.
"Why do you tell me all these things? What are you driving at? This is strange talk to hear from an
architect; you sound like one of the conspirators I've heard rumors of."
"I'm talking for a specific purposeтАФjust as I worked on this job for a specific purpose. I want to
bring you to our way of thinking."