"Niven, Larry - Cloak Of Anarchy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Niven Larry)

"You make one exception, it's like a wedge. When someone ruins a fountain, they wait and fix it that night. That way . . . If I see someone trying to wreck a fountain, I'll generally throw a punch at him. A lot of us do. After a guy's lost enough of his holiday to the copseye stunners, he'll get the idea, sooner or later."

The fountain was a solid cube of concrete with four spigots and a hand-sized metal button. It was hard to jam, hard to hurt. Ron Cole stood near it, looking lost.
He seemed glad to see me, but still lost. I introduced him - "You remember Jill Hayes." He said, "Certainly. Hello, Jill," and, having put her name to its intended purpose, promptly forgot it.
Jill said, "We thought you'd made a break for it."
"I did.,,
"Oh?"
"You know how complicated the exits are. They have to be, to keep anyone from getting in through an exit with-like a shotgun." Ron ran both hands through his hair, without making it an\ more or less neat. "Well, all the exits have stopped working. They must be on the same circuits as the copseyes. I wasn't expecting, that."
"Then we're locked in," I said. That was irritating. But underneath the irritation was a funny feeling in the pit of my, stomach. "How long do you think-"
"No telling. They'll have to get new copseyes in somehow. And repair the beamed power system, and figure out how I bollixed it, and fix it so it doesn't happen again. I suppose someone rust have


kicked my rigged copseye to pieces by now, but the police don't know that."
"Oh, they'll just send in some cops," said Jill.
"Look around you."
There were pieces of copseyes in all directions. Not one remained whole. A cop would have to be out of his mind to enter a Free Park.
Not to mention the damage to the spirit of the Park.
"I wish I'd brought a bag lunch," said Ron.
I saw the cloak off to my right: a ribbon of glowing blue velvet hovering at five feet, like a carpeted path in the air. I didn't yell, or point, or anything. For Ron it might be pushing the wrong buttons.
Ron didn't see it. "Actually I'm kind of glad this happened," he said animatedly. "I've always thought that anarchy ought to be a viable form of society."
Jill made polite sounds of encouragement.
"After all, anarchy is only the last word in free enterprise. What can a government do for people that people can't do for themselves? Protection from other countries? If all the other countries are anarchies, too, you don't need armies. Police, maybe; but what's wrong with privately owned police?"
"Fire departments used to work that way," Jill remembered. "They were hired by the insurance companies. They only protected houses that belonged to their own clients."
"Right! So you buy theft and murder insurance, and the insurance companies hire a police force. The client carries a credit card -"
"Suppose the robber steals the card, too?"
"He can't use it. He doesn't have the right retina prints."
"But if the client doesn't have the credit card, he can't sic the cops on the thief."
"Oh. " A noticeable pause. "Well -"
Half-listening, for I had heard it all before, I looked for the endpoints of the cloak. I found empty space at one end and a lovely red-haired girl at the other. She was talking to two men as outrй as herself.
One can get the impression that a Free Park is one gigantic costume party. It isn't. Not one person in ten wears anything bait street clothes; but the costumes are what get noticed.
These guy were pert bird.


Their eyebrows and eyelashes were tiny feathers, green on one, golden on the other. Larger feathers covered their heads, blue and green and gold, and ran in a crest down their spines. They were bare to the waist, showing physiques Jill would find acceptable.
Ron was lecturing. "What does a government do for anyone except the people who run the government? Once there were private post offices, and they were cheaper than what we've got now. Anything the government takes over gets more expensive, immediately. There's no reason why private enterprise can't do anything a government-"
Jill gasped. She said, "Ooh! How lovely."
Ron turned to look.
As if on cue, the girl in the cloak slapped one of the feathered men hard across the mouth. She tried to hit the other one, but he caught her wrist. Then all three froze.
I said, "See? Nobody wins. She doesn't even like standing still. She -" and I realized why they weren't moving.
In a Free Park it's easy for a girl to turn down an offer. If the guy won't take No for an answer, he gets slapped. The stun beam gets him and the girl. When she wakes up, she walks away.
Simple.
The girl recovered first. She gasped and jerked her wrist loose and turned to run. One of the feathered men didn't bother to chase her; he simply took a double handful of the cloak.
This was getting serious.
The cloak jerked her sharply backward. She didn't hesitate. She reached for the big gold disks at her shoulders, ripped them loose and ran on. The feathered men chased her, laughing.
The redhead wasn't laughing. She was running all out. Two drops of blood ran down her shoulders. I thought of trying to stop the feathered men, decided in favor of it-but they were already past.
The cloak hung like a carpeted path in the air, empty at both ends.
Jill hugged herself uneasily. "Ron, just how does one go about hiring your private police force?"
"Well, you can't expect it to form spontaneously-"
"Let's try the entrances. Maybe we can get out."