"Alexander Kazantsev - The Destruction of Faena" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kazantsev Alexander)

Kutsi Merc considered it necessary to display the traditional curiosity,
so he and Ave did not allow themselves time for a rest, but trailed off into
the famous roundhead quarters.
Although he knew the slums of his native continent, Ave had never
imagined that Faetians could live in such filthy and overcrowded
conditions. It was only possible to breathe on a street when it became a
suspension bridge. But where the street was hemmed in by buildings and
ran between them like a tunnel, it became, as it were, part of the living
quarters. Not shy of passers-by, the Faetians kept their doors open, got on
with their household chores, sat at the table with children born before the
roundheads were banned from having children, ate their simple but
acrid-smelling food and went to bed. The Faetesses poked their heads out
of the open doors and, shouting loudly, conversed with the inhabitants on
the second or third stories up. Here and there, only just above the heads of
the passers-by, the inmates' washing had been hung out to dry; most of
them did not know whether they would have to sweat at work on the next
day as well.
Ave very much wanted to hold his nose when, accompanied by Kutsi, he
fled from those evil-smelling quarters, famed for their openly exhibited
poverty. The Power of Justice had only existed for a hundred and three
days and it had not been able to help the residents...
"So what's the answer to this?" wondered Ave. "Is it really in the
monstrous law of a Dictator who has forbidden these families to have
children?"
Was it really to see all this that he had dreamed of coming here from
across the ocean ever since childhood?
But next day he saw the Great Shore and Mada.




Chapter Three

THE MASTERS

Dictator Yar Jupi's palace was part of the Temple of Eternity, in which
worship had ceased after the Faetians forgot their religion. Now the Dread
Wall separated the temple from the monastery buildings that had been
converted for the Dictator's use. The soaring spire of black stone
resembled a torpedo with a disintegration warhead. The ancient
architects never suspected that they were anticipating the outlines of a
future weapon. Even less could they have imagined that, in the event of a
disintegration war, the cellars under the Temple of Eternity would house
the Central Control Panel of Defence Automatons. The machines could
unleash a death-dealing swarm of disintegration torpedoes against
Danjab.
A session of Peaceful Space was now being held over these fearsome
machines in the former shrine of the temple with its black columns
soaring up into the sky. Its chairman was Dm Sat of Danjab, who had in
his time discovered the disintegration of matter (By the disintegration of