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

possible to the social problems created by past systems of life imprisonment.
Prisons of any kind are bad for the communities around them, from a moral and
social view, even when they have been economically beneficial. The Orbits
require no warden or guards, thus eliminating all possible abuses. What can it
matter to the lifers who wiU never be released? We are assured, as we sever
ourselves from them irrevocably, that a life sentence will be just that. No
false promise is held out No world waits outside the walls. No one ever gets
out. No one can reach out to create new criminals. Deterrence is served as
well as it can be, and our hypocrisy is at an end. Just look at the good use
to which we can
тАвrattMNs 11
put these mined-out rocks! A pretty piece of real estate at 150 square
kilometers!"
Harry Howes grew up on a dairy farm near the caverns in upstate New York. He
came down to New York City in 2049 to escape a violent father, an incestuous
mother, and a farm that would soon go under. He was just twenty and didn't
know what he was going to do, but hoped to find work on the dikes that were
being constructed to prevent the rising ocean from flooding the city.
He never got near to working on the project, because he met Jay Polati, who
told him about an old world jeweler and watch repairer with a shop on
Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx.
"The man is old," Polau said, "so we can go in and get a lot of stuff before
he wakes up. The guy's rich, with more stuff we can fence than heTl ever be
able to use before he dies. He can't sell it, but we can. He's got no one, and
nobody cares what happens to him. He never spends anything. It's not right,
not when we can use what he's got."
Harry needed a few bucks, just until the job came through; if it didn't, he'd
have to go home, and that frightened him. It would be all right, he told
himself, almost a loan, just enough to get him through and keep him from the
clutches of his mother. When his father
12
died, she'd get the insurance and upgrade the farm to hydroponics, factory
style. He shuddered at the thought of going home again to run the farm and
take care of her. Anything would be better.
Old man Buda, an old Hungarian, got up and caught them at his ancient safe.
Polau clubbed bim to death. They opened the safe тАФ and there was old jewelry,
lots of bank codes, even some paper money.
The police were quietly waiting outside when he and Polau came out.
"I've never done anything wrong before," Harry told the judge.
"But your friend, Polau, what about him?"
"I didn't know much about him . . ."
"The old man died," the judge said, "and you admitted hitting him also. You
may kill again if I let you loose. Better to have you out of the way. Thirty
years."
Thirty years, in a cave up in the sky. Polau got life.
On the day that he and Polau arrived, the engineers lit the sunplate at one
end of the hol-lowed-out asteroid. This was a huge, perfectly round plate set
in the narrow forward end of the hollow potato. Fed by electricity from
compact fusion furnaces, it glowed red when first turned on, then yellow, and
bright yellow-orange at full power, filling the inside with j^l-