"Colin Wilson - Spiderworld 05 - The Magician" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Colin)

"None of the slaves has been in there?"
"No, sir." This time, Niall sensed his hesitation. It was understandable enough.
Watching slaves shoveling snow was scarcely a demanding job; what could be more
natural than turning his back and gazing into the distance?
Niall looked thoughtfully at the slaves. It seemed inconceivable that any of these
pathetic creatures could have taken the disc. To begin with, it would be too heavy for the
pockets of their garments. Slaves were notoriously inclined to steal, but they were usually
interested in food, or attractive shining objects. Niall scanned the minds of those who
were closest to him. It was as he had expected. Slaves seemed to live in a permanent
mental fog, a perpetual present without past or future; their minds were little more than a
reflection of their environment. By comparison, even the overseer was an intellectual
prodigy. Niall always found it depressing to probe the minds of slaves; they took their
emptiness so completely for granted that it was contagious, like a disease.
Niall said: "Listen to me, Dion. Behind this house there is a garden with a gate in
the wall. Follow my footprints along the lane. They will lead you to an empty swimming
pool, in which you will find the body of a man. Have him carried to my palace. Do you
understand?"
"Yes, sir." If the man was surprised, his face showed no sign of it. Under the
spiders, the overseers had been trained to obey like machines.



As he retraced his footsteps through the snow, Niall was lost in thought. The
events of the past few hours had left him baffled. Yet he found them irritating and
puzzling rather than alarming -- a tiresome interruption of more important affairs.
The past six months had been the most absorbing and exciting of his life. Since
the spiders had granted men their freedom, life had become a continuous adventure. In
the days of slavery, men had not been allowed to use their minds. Children had been
raised in strictly supervised nurseries; any who showed signs of unusual intelligence were
destroyed. Books had been forbidden; so had any form of mechanical device. Even the
servants of the bombardier beetles, who had always enjoyed relative freedom, had been
forbidden to construct any kind of machine on pain of death.
In practice, the beetle servants had ignored the prohibition; for generations, their
children had secretly learned to read. But the men of the spider city had been allowed no
such latitude. Ever since birth, their minds had been systematically violated by their
masters; even their most secret thoughts had been open to inspection by the spiders. Most
of them had never even dreamed of the possibility of freedom.
The men of Dira were a different matter. Until their capture by the spiders less
than a year ago, they had always been free. But their minds had been cramped by
generations of confinement in an underground fortress, and by the need for the strictest
obedience if they were to avoid the vigilance of spider patrols. In order to guarantee their
safety, their rulers -- like the late King Kazak -- had demanded total submission and
loyalty. Even the women of Dira were treated by Kazak as his private harem. So the men
of Dira were almost as ill equipped as the men of the spider city to deal with the
experience of self-determination.
It had not taken Niall long to realize that men need to be taught to exercise their
freedom. Too much freedom bewildered them and made them lazy. So the men of the
spider city continued to go to work daily under the supervision of the female
commanders. But these commanders were now -- theoretically at least -- under the orders
of the Council of Free Men. In fact, they continued to work closely with their old