"Harry Harrison - Planet Of The Damned (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

"We can beat this back and forth all day," Ihjel told him, "and you won't get
the right idea unless--" He broke off suddenly, staring at the communicator.
The operation light had come on, though the screen stayed dark. Ihjel reached
down a meaty hand and pulled loose the recently connected wires. "That doc-

tor of yours is very curious--and he's going to stay that way. The truth
behind the Twenties is none of his business. But it's going to be yours. You
must come to realize that the life you lead here is a complete and artificial
construction, developed by Societies experts and put into application by
skilled field workers."

"Nonsense!" Brion broke in. "Systems of society can't be dreamed up and forced
on people like that. Not without bloodshed and violence."

"Nonsense, yourself," Ihjel told him. "That may have been true in the dawn of
history, but not any more. You have been reading too many of the old Earth
classics; you imagine that we still live in the Ages of Superstition. Just
because fascism and communism were once forced on reluctant populations, you
think this holds true for all time. Go back to your books. In exactly the same
era democracy and self-government were adapted by former colonial states, like
India and the Union of North Africa, and the only violence was between local
religious groups. Change is the lifeblood of mankind. Everything we today
accept as normal was at one time an innovation. And one of the most recent
innovations is the attempt to guide the societies of mankind into something
more consistent with the personal happiness of individuals."

"The God complex," Brion said; "forcing human lives into a mold whether they
want to be fitted into it or not."

"Societies can be that," Ihjel agreed. "It was in the beginning, and there
were some disastrous results of attempts to force populations into a political
climate where they didn't belong. They weren't all failures-- Anvhar here is a
striking example of how good the technique can be when correctly applied. It's
not done this way any more, though. As with all of the other sciences, we have
found out that the more we know, the more there is to know. We no longer
attempt to guide cultures towards what we consider a beneficial goal. There
are too many goals, and from our limited vantage point it is hard to tell the
good

ones from the bad ones. All we do now is try to protect the growing cultures,
give a little jolt to the stagnating ones--and bury the dead ones. When the
work was first done here on Anvhar the theory hadn't progressed that far. The
understandably complex equations that determine just where in the scale from a
Type I to a Type V a culture is, had not yet been completed. The technique
then was to work out an artificial culture that would be most beneficial for a
planet, then bend it into the mold."

"How can that be done?" Brion asked. "How was it done here?"