"Gordon R. Dickson - In The Bone" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

IN THE BONE



by



Gordon R. Dickson




Personally, his name was Harry Brennan.

Officially, he was theJohn Paul Jones , which consisted of four billion dollars’ worth of irresistible
equipment – the latest and best of human science – designed to spread its four thousand-odd
components out through some fifteen cubic metres of space under ordinary conditions – designed also to
stretch across light-years under extraordinary conditions (such as sending an emergency
message-component home) or to clump into a single magnetic unit in order to shift through space and
explore the galaxy. Both officially and personally – but most of all personally – he represents a case in
point.

The case is one having to do with the relative importance of the made thing and its maker.

It was, as we know, the armoured horseman who dominated the early wars of the Middle Ages in
Europe. But, knowing this, it is still wise to remember that it was not the iron shell that made the
combination of man and metal terrible to the enemy – but rather the essentially naked man inside the shell.
Later, French knights depending on their armour went down before the cloth-yard shafts of unarmoured
footmen with bows, at Crécy and Poitiers.

And what holds true for armour holds true for the latest developments of our science as well. It is not the
spacecraft or the laser on which we will find ourselves depending when a time of ultimate decision comes,
but the naked men within and behind these things. When that time comes, those who rank the made thing
before its maker will die as the French knights died at Crécy and Poitiers. This is a law of nature as wide
as the universe, which Harry Brennan, totally unsuspecting, was to discover once more for us, in his
personal capacity.



Personally, he was in his mid-twenties, unremarkable except for two years of special training with the
John Paul Jones and his superb physical condition. He was five-eleven, a hundred and seventy-two
pounds, with a round, cheerful face under his brown crew-cut hair. I was Public Relations Director of the
Project that sent him out; and I was there with the rest to slap him on the back the day he left.

“Don’t get lost, now,” said someone. Harry grinned.
 “The way you guys built this thing,” he answered, “if I got lost the galaxy would just have to shift itself
around to get me back on plot.”

There was an unconscious arrogance hidden in that answer, but no one marked it at the time. It was not