"George Zebrowski - Brute orbits" - читать интересную книгу автора (Zebrowski George)

cried the self-proclaimed humane, puffing virtue.
"We will not see you again," intoned the judges.
And to communities and victimized individuals came the assurance: "You will
not look into this face again. You will not suffer from him again. He will go
from you forever."
This was only one of the social opportunities that came with the opening of
the solar system to industryтАФas simple as discovering that "transportation"
was not only cost effective but relatively cheap, and growing cheaper. New
meaning was given to the word that had described the exile of convicts to
imperial colonies of centuries past. For the politicians, it was the opening
of a bottomless abyss into which they could throw the rejectsтАФand the
inconvenient; and as it had been with previous penal systems, it was not
always easy to know which was which. Nations traded their damned: You exile
mine and I yours. In the minds of the law-fearing middle classes living
between the alliance of power and the street and kept ignorant as one does
children before whom one is ashamed, the convicted must surely be guilty of
something, even if it was not the specific charge. The few guiltless who might
occasionally be trapped by the system were a small price to pay...
As the chorus of practicality and political convenience exhausted its
justifications in the minds of thoughtful human heings, the chorus of
conscience began its chant, as the realities waited to be revealed in the deep
void. The permeable interface between society and its prisons had not been
abolished, only slowed; the curiosity of the thoughtful persisted, irritating
human sympathies as a drop of water slowly wears away mountains.
With later knowledge, the cry went up, saying, "If we had known, if we had
only understood, we would have done differently!"
Power, the father of the middle-class elites, replied, "You wanted peace in
your enclaves, to raise your families and pursue your educations, and we gave
you that!" And the damned of the streets said to power, "We did your dirty
work, and filled your pockets with wealth, selling the drugs and vices that
you could not to the less-than clean and straight."
Power said to this, "You also worked for yourselves as you corrupted us."
There is false pride in hindsight. Revealed wrongs elicit sentimental bandages
to dress the wounds of history. Individuals insist, saying, "I would not have
let this happen, because I am good. If I had been given the power ... if I had
Bnrti Orbits 9
been in charge... if I were king... if I were dictator for even a week!" The
sweetest lie of all sings of what might have been... if only ...
The chorus of history is not completely silenced. Its bitter overview gives
what only the few wish to see, and it's full of pity. Later step-back
perspectives bring dishonest, conflicting, and self-congratulatory wisdom.
Raise up the damned and they will behave no differently than the powerful;
diminish the powerful and they will be as the damned. Hope suggests that
hindsight should not wait, but invade and rule the present; while another
wisdom holds that life must unfold unpredictably, with failure and success as
its twin powers, that impatience and constraining reason are the enemies of
ingenuity, eager to shackle the future with much more than the forwarding of
settled knowledge and culture.
JUDGE OVERTONES PRIVATE CHAMBER
"An orbit longer than the lifetime of any inmate is the most just solution