"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Dispossesed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

it, or the captain's tone, or the captain. "Can you look
after you?" she asked briefly.

**HeU, yea. You just get the rest of this cargo omoaded,
quick. And get this passenger bastard on board. No mob of
Oddies is about to give us any trouble.*' He patted the
thing he wore on his belt, a metal object like a deformed
penis, and looked patronizingly at the unarmed woman.

She gave the phallic object, which she knew was a
weapon, a cold glance. "Ship will be loaded by fourteen
hours." she said. "Keep crew on board safe. Liftoff at
fourteen hours forty. If you need help, leave message on
tape at Ground Control" She strode off before the captain
could one-up her. Anger made her more forceful with her
crew and the crowd. •'Clear the road theret" she ordered
as she neared the waD. "Trucks are coming through, some-
body's going to get hurt. Clear asidel"

The men and women in the crowd argued with her and
with one another. They kept crossing the road, and some
came inside the wall. Yet they did more or less clear th&
way. If the foreman had no experience in bossing a mob,
they had no experience in being one. Members of a com-
munity, not elements of a collectivity, they were not moved
by mass feeling; there were as many emotions there as
there were people. And they did not expect commands to
bo arbitrary, so they had no practice in disobeying them.
Their inexperience saved the passenger's life.


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Some of them had come there to kill a traitor. Others
had come to prevent him from leaving, or to yell insults
at him, or just to look at him; and all these others ob-
structed the sheer brief path of the assassins. None of them
had firearms, though a couple had knives. Assault to them
meant bodily assault; they wanted to take the traitor into
their own hands. They expected him to come guarded, in a
vehicle. While they were trying to inspect a goods truck
and arguing with its outraged driver, the man they wanted
came walking up the road, alone. When they recognized
3

him he was already halfway across the field, with five De-
fense syndics following him. Those who had wanted to kill
him resorted to pursuit, too-late, and to rock throwing, not