"Gordon R. Dickson - Time to Teleport" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

"The groups," he said, "have always prided themselves on a high degree of tolerance. And for over half a
century this tolerance has not been abused."

With Sellars' eyes straight upon him, Eli permitted himself the luxury of a small ironic smile. But if the
spokesman for Transportation noticed, he gave no sign of it.

"There is, however, he went on, "a point at which tolerance must give way to the dictates of common
sense. Such is the present time.

"In the last twenty years we have seen the emergence of a secret society masquerading as a
philosophical association. The members of this society have taken to themselves the notion that the
human race as it nowis, is obsolete. They have taken it on themselves to decide we're all due to become
extinct to make way for the next generation, which will be something entirely different."

Sellars paused and let his slow, impressive gaze sweep the room once more.

"Now that," he went on, "is a fine theory. And as long as it stays a theory I don't mind who holds it. But
these crackpots who call themselvesMembersof theHuman Race—as if only they were, and nobody else
was—have gone ahead to try and give evolution a helping hand. Their notion of this is to try hard
radiation on themselves and anyone else they can get their hands on, to dabble in every sort of dirty
occult business they can dig up, and to practice gene experimentation on their own children.

"This, alone, to my mind, is reason enough for us to get together and clean up the situation they've
caused. But there's more to it than just that. I've had Veillain list you off some accounts of what's been
discovered lately about these so-called "foundations" and "research centers" they put up, and if you
listened to him carefully, you heard only one thing—and that is simply this. These Members—these
Inhumansas people rightly call them—are succeeding."

He stopped to let this sink in. The council room remained silent about him; and, after a second, he went
on.

"I tell you theyaresucceeding. The fact that I cannot at this moment produce a specimen of their 'next
step in evolution' should not blind you to the fact that we have abundant indirect evidence that such
specimens do exist. Fiddle a bit more and you'll get some dangerous freaks. Want an example?"

"For two hundred years now the human race has been playing with the idea of possessing the so-called
psi faculties—telepathy, telekinesis, etc. And for thirty years the Members have been telling us that our
next evolutionary step would be not a physical, but a mental one, which would enable us to possess these
faculties. But for the first twenty-five of these years they were publishing regular reports about their
experimentation in this field, and had so often repeated their belief in the existence of such faculties that
the general public had become almost tone deaf to that particular portion of their propaganda scale.

"Suddenly, during this last five years, the reports dwindle. The propaganda ceases, references to the psi
faculties become general and vague. Why? And now that we, at least, within the Transportation Group,
have begun to root them out of their dark corners, there are inexplicable instances of Members being
warned of our raids ahead of time, of Members disappearing from the equivalent of locked rooms.
How?"

Sellars paused once more.
 "Both these things," he said, slowly, "as well as a growing body of popular legend that sounds as if it