"Chalker, Jack L - G.O.D. Inc 3 - The Maze in the Mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

kidnapped, or even turned traitor? The first unauthorized access of that
information would wipe it out completely. I'd remember that I once knew it, but
I wouldn't know what it was. See?"
Sam nodded. "So you had no leads on dear Doctor Carlos or anyone else who might
be in the organization even when you had the leader."
"Well, he thought he was the ringleader. Remember, they were out to get Mukasa,
too. The problem with the closed culture of the Company world is that they tend
to think that everybody thinks like they do. They don't have moral principles,
just logical positions. They think that the only reason a slave hates slavery is
because he'd rather be a master and enslave somebody else. It's nearly
incomprehensible to them, except on an academic level, to imagine someone who
might hate slavery because it is evil, because it is morally repugnant. Concepts
like evil and morally repugnant really have no meaning for them. So they went
out and recruited a huge number of very talented, even brilliant, people who for
one reason or another had reason to hate the Company. It was a straight business
deal to them, see? Help me break the Board and take over the Company and then
you will run the Company as my underlings."
"Yeah," Sam sighed, "but the underlings really hated the Company, including the
fellow who hired them. I wonder why?"
Markham shrugged. "There are always enough people who get stepped on in any
large organization who generate that kind of hatred. Far less from the Company
world, of course, but it's there even there, at least in any human cultures
comprehensible to us. When you have access to all the personnel files and all
the evaluations and Histories of everyone who ever worked in any capacity for
the Company, I doubt if it would take either of us more than a day to find an
entire army."
"Point taken. But a Company girl did fall into the lower camp."
"Uh huh. She was out all the time, in contact with these people on a
near-constant basis. She found in these rebels something she'd never seen in her
own people-passion. A total commitment to a cause, and a viewpoint that
graphically illustrated just what the Company did and what it was like and which
humanized the whole thing. We think she fell in love with Carlos, and that
Carlos radicalized her until she identified more with them than with her own
people. Sheer guilt, but stirred well with resentment that the only way she
could progress in society was as a mistress and henchman. The guilt part is the
same reason so many poor little pampered rich kids become Trotskyites and the
like here. And, of course, they used her just like they used her boss. The
problem was, we lopped off the guy who caused it all to be possible and we
lopped off the radicalized agent of the real plot, but we didn't lop off the
true head of the radicals and the organization remained pretty well insulated
and intact. We have been trying for years now to find out who, what, and where
they are."
"And you succeeded?"
"To a very low point only. Do you know how many worlds intersect the Labyrinth
and how many weak points there are even where we don't have stations? Let's just
say it's a geometric progression. The only thing we had going for us was that
the opposition couldn't stay still forever without ceasing to be an opposition.
For a year or so they fell back, licked their wounds, regrouped, and figured out
what to do now. Then they started again, and we began to detect violations of
security. They're good-damned good-and we always moved a fraction too slow."