"Tom Kratman - A Desert Called Peace" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kratman Tom)

Eyes fixing upon the Nussbaum work, a gift from his parents many years prior, the reader thought,
Amazing that that line of thought should have succeeded in contaminating not one but two
worlds. What utter nonsense!
A stranger, given time to realize the single minded purposefulness of the library, might eventually
have concluded that the reader considered war his art; perhaps all he cared about.
The stranger would have been wrong. War was not all the reader cared about, nor even what he
cared most about. It had been a job and was still a hobby; it was not a life.
The reader, one Patrick Hennessey, late of the Army of the Federated States of Columbia, put
down the book he had been studying and closed his eyes, deep in thought.
Decision Cycle Theory, the Observation-Orientation-Decision-Action loop, plainly was
working against Nagumo at Midway on Old Earth. How and why is combat on the ground
different? Friction? Scale and scope? The vulnerability of large single targets like aircraft and
aircraft carriers compared with the endurance and ability to soak up punishment of ground forces
composed of many small units and separate individuals? Nagumo's pure frigging bad luck?
Hennessey's aquiline face frowned in concentration. Pale blue eyes, normally slightly too large for
the size of that face, narrowed. A viewer would not have been able to see the darker circles around the
irises that typically gave those eyes their frighteningly penetrating quality. "The eyes of a madman," said
some, not always jokingly.
Have to think on this one. Hennessey resumed his reading.
The satanic sounding Latin piece ended, to be replaced by:
"I see a red door and I want it painted black
No colors anymore I want them to turn black . . . "
To Hennessey the music was a drug, a way of purging the unwelcome feelings and emotions, most
of them dark, that otherwise might have taken possession of him. Between that, his calming scotch, cigars
and cigarettes, and – most especially – his wife, he kept the surge of feelings under control or, at least, at
bay.
A cigarette burned in the ashtray on the maple inlayed into the mahogany desk, smoke curling up
about twelve inches before being sucked outside by a ventilation fan. The fan dispersed it to a courtyard
surrounded on all sides by the house Hennessey and his wife, Linda, had had built following his departure
from the F.S. Army.
***
The cigarette was interesting, or, rather, the tobacco in it was. Despite many disapproving clucks
from progressives back on Old Earth, a number of the early colonists had made sure to bring tobacco
seeds. Once planted on Terra Nova, the tobacco had come under attack from a virus unknown on Old
Earth. Whether this virus was native to Terra Nova, or a mutation from the earlier transplanting by the
Noahs, or something unmodified and native to Old Earth that had either died out or never been identified;
no one knew. The subject was hotly debated.
The effect of the virus, though, was to remove nearly all of the carcinogens from the tobacco. It
remained addictive and was still rather unhealthy. It remained highly profitable to sell, the more so as it
was considerably safer than Old Earth tobacco.
Of course, the sale and use of tobacco had come under even more virulent attack as Terra Nova
developed its own brand of "progressive." Couching their arguments in terms of health, what these truly
objected to was the profitability of the commodity. Progressives hated profit.
They hate profit, Hennessey thought, unless it's their own.
Hennessey knew about progressives. Especially did he know about Cosmopolitan Progressives, or
Kosmos. He should have; he'd been raised to be one. The lessons had never quite taken.
***
Hennessey's library was in the very back of the house and reached from inner courtyard to rear
windows. By turning his chair towards the rear Hennessey could see the one hundred and twenty-five
foot waterfall that had made his wife, Linda, fall in love with this particular piece of land. The waterfall