"James Alan Gardner - League of Peoples 07 - Radiant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner James Alan)

Because if the person who dies has a weeping reeking cheek, those inside the pleasure palace are less
likely to identify with the victim. When an Ugly Screaming Stink-Girl gets killed, the death won't affect
real people's performance. Why should it? She wasn't quite... quite. And the news services won't report
her decease to the world at large, because then they'd have to publish her picture.

Nothing hurts a newswire's circulation figures like pictures of Explorers.

At least that's what we were told in school. Even back then, I wondered if there might be more to it: if
perhaps somebody in the back rooms of government or elsewhere recognized that the Technocracy's
pleasure palace culture was a dead end. Prince Gotama couldn't achieve his potential until he walked
away from his harem and feasts.

Could it be the Explorer Corps was intended to follow Gotama's example? That we'd been sent down
our difficult path because we alone were worthy? Or that the corps had been created for some
as-yet-unrevealed purpose, and the popular belief that "ugly deaths don't hurt morale" was simply a
cover-up for the truth?

The pampered mobs in the pleasure palace were too weak to become wise. Only those marked by
adversity—running sores, deformed jaws, bulging eyes, angry birthmarks—had the strength to become
fully free. Perhaps the Explorer Corps had been created so there'd always be a few of us who weren't
sedate cattle. Perhaps some unknown bureaucrat, blessed with the stirrings of enlightenment, was offering
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Explorers the chance to Awaken.

Or was that wishful thinking? Given the stupidity displayed by people in power, why should I believe
secret wisdom was at work? More likely, the Explorer Corps resulted from age-old hatreds against
those who looked different, disguised as a branch of the navy because the League didn't allow the
outright slaughter of pariahs.

Or perhaps it was the ultimate deterrent to discourage bioengineering: don't gene-splice your children, or
we'll force them to become Explorers.




CHAPTER 2
Klesha [Sanskrit]: Poison. Used to describe any mental attitude that leads to disruptive fixations.



I graduated from the Explorer Academy four days after I turned nineteen. A week later, I was assigned
to the frigatePistachio. The name made me laugh when I heard it; but tradition dictated that all vessels in
the Outward Fleet be named after Old Earth trees, and only big ships got majestic titles likeIron-wood or
Sequoia. Little ships like ours (a crew of thirty-five plus a handful of cadets-in-training) had to settle for
names of less grandeur... and just be thankful we weren'tSassafras, Kumquat, orGum.