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

We lay on wet grass, sometimes dozing, sometimes talking. Two other groups no bigger than ours occupied the jousting field. whey kept their distance, we kept ours. Now and then we heard voices, and knew that they were not asleep; not all at once, anyway.
Blank Sign dozed restlessly. His ribs were giving him trouble, though Jill said none of them were broken. Every so often he whimpered and tried to move and woke himself up. Then he had to hold himself still until he fell asleep again.
"Money," said Jill. "It takes a government to print money."
"But you could get IOUs printed. Standard denominations, printed for a fee and notarized. Backed by your good name."
Jill laughed softly. "Thought of everything, haven't you? You couldn't travel very far that way."
"Credit cards, then."
I had stopped believing in Ron's anarchy. I said, "Ron, remember the girl in the long blue cloak?"
A little gap of silence. "Yah?"
"Pretty, wasn't she? Fun to watch."
"Granted."
"If there weren't any laws to stop you from raping her, she'd be Muffled to the ears in a long dress and carrying a tear gas pen. What tun would that be? I like the nude look. Look how fast it disappeared after the copseyes fell."
"Mm-m," said Ron.
The night was turning cold. Faraway voices; occasional distant shouts, came like thin gray threads in a black tapestry of silence. Mrs. Hawthorne spoke into that silence.
"What was that boy really saying with his blank sign?"
"He wasn't saying anything," said Jill.
"Now, just a minute, dear. I think he was, even if he didn't know it." Mrs. Hawthorne talked slowly, using the words to shape her thoughts. "Once there was an organization to protest the forced contraception bill. I was one of them. We carried signs for hours at a time. We printed leaflets. We stopped people passing so that we could talk to them. We gave up our time, we went to considerable trouble and expense, because we wanted to get our ideas across.


"Now, if a man had joined us with a blank sign, he would have peen saying something.
"His sign says that he has no opinion. If he joins us, he says that we have no opinion either. He's saying our opinions aren't worth anything."
I said, "Tell him when he wakes up. He can put it in his n otebook."
"But his notebook is wrong. He wouldn't push his blank sign in :among people he agreed with, would he?"
"Maybe not."
"I . . . suppose I don't like people with no opinions." Mrs. Hawthorne stood up. She had been sitting tailor-fashion for some hours. "Do you know if there's a pop machine nearby?"
There wasn't, of course. No private company would risk getting their machines smashed once or twice a day. But she had reminded the rest of us that we were thirsty. Eventually we all got up and trooped away in the direction of the fountain.
All but Blank Sign.
I'd liked that blank sign gag. How odd, how ominous, that so basic a right as freedom of speech could depend on so slight a thing as a floating copseye.
I was thirsty.
The Park was bright by city lights, crossed by sharpedged shadows. in such light it seems that one can see much more than he really can. I could see into every shadow; but, though there were stirrings all around us, I could see nobody until he moved. We four, sitting under an oak with our backs to the tremendous trunk, must be invisible from any distance.
We talked little. The Park was quiet except for occasional laughter from the fountain.
I couldn't forget my thirst. I could feel others being thirsty around me. The fountain was right out there in the open, a solid block of concrete with five men around it.
They were dressed alike, in paper shorts with big pockets. They looked alike: like first-string atheletes. Maybe they belonged to the same order, or frat, or ROTC class.
They had taken over the fountain.
When someone came to bet a drink, the tall ash-blond one


would step forward with his arm held stiffly out, palm forward. He had a wide mouth and a grin that might otherwise have been infectious, and a deep, echoing voice. He would intone, "Go back. None may pass here but the immortal Cthulhu -" or something equally silly.
Trouble was, they weren't kidding. Or: they were kidding, but they wouldn't let anyone have a drink.
When we arrived, a girl dressed in a towel had been trying to talk some sense into them. It hadn't worked. It might even have boosted their egos: a lovely half-naked girl begging them for water. Eventually she'd given up and gone away.
In that light her hair might have been red. I hoped it was the girl in the cloak.
And a beefy man in a yellow business jumper had made the mistake of demanding his Rights. It was not a night for Rights. The blond kid had goaded him into screaming insults, a stream of unimaginative profanity, which ended when he tried to hit the blond kid. Then three of them had swarmed over him. The man had left crawling, moaning of police and lawsuits.
Why hadn't somebody done something?
I had watched it all from sitting position. I could list my own reasons. One: it was hard to face the fact that a copseye would not zap them both, any second now. Two: I didn't like the screaming fat man much. He talked dirty. Three: I'd been waiting for someone else to step in.
Mrs. Hawthorne said, "Ronald, what time is it?"
Ron may have been the only man in King's Free Park who knew the time. People generally left their valuables in lockers at the entrances. But years ago, when Ron was flush with money from the sale of the engraved beer bottles, he'd bought an implant-watch. He told time by one red mark and two red lines glowing beneath the skin of his wrist.
We had put the women between us, but I saw the motion as he glanced at his wrist. "Quarter of twelve."
"Don't you think they'll get bored and go away? It's been twenty minutes since anyone tried to get a drink," Mrs. Hawthorne said.
Jill shifted against line in the dark. "They can't be any more bored