"Mack Reynolds - Planetary Agent X" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

better.”
“Sure. And this’ll give you an idea of how he operates, how he
can get so much trouble done. Well, I was on this planet Goshen,
understand? It had kind of a strange history. A bunch of colonists
went out there, oh, four or five centuries ago. Pretty healthy
expedition, as such outfits go. Bright young people, lots of
equipment, lots of know-how and books. Well, through sheer bad
luck everything went wrong from the beginning. Everything.
Before they got set up at all they had an explosion that killed off all
their communications technicians. They lost contact with the
outside. O.K. Within a couple of centuries they’d gotten into a state
of chattel slavery. Pretty well organized, but static. Kind of an
Athenian Democracy on top, a hierarchy, but nineteen people out
of twenty were slaves, and I mean real slaves, like animals. They
were at this stage when a scout ship from the UP Space Forces
discovered them and, of course, they joined up.”
“Where does Tommy Paine come in?” Ronny said. He
signaled to a waiter for more beer.
“He comes in a few years later. I was the Section G agent on
Goshen, understand? No planet was keener about Articles One and
Two of the UP Charter. The hierarchy understood well enough that
if their people ever came to know about more advanced
socio-economic systems it’d be the end of Goshen’s Golden Age.
So they allowed practically no intercourse. No contact whatsoever
between UP personnel and anyone outside the upper class,
understand? All right. That’s where Tommy Paine came in. It
couldn’t have taken him more than a couple of months at most.”
Ronny Bronston was fascinated. “What’d he do?”
“He introduced the steam engine, and then left.”
Ronny was looking at him blankly. “Steam engine?”
“That and the fly shuttle and the spinning jenny,” the
Nigerian said. “That Goshen hierarchy never knew what hit them.”

Ronny was still blank. The waiter came up with the steins of
beer, and Ronny took one and drained half of it without taking his
eyes from the storyteller.
 The other agent took it up. “Don’t you see? Their system was
based on chattel slavery, hand labor. Given machinery and it
collapses. Chattel slavery isn’t practical in a mechanized society.
Too expensive a labor force, for one thing. Besides, you need an
educated man and one with some initiative—qualities that few
slaves possess—to run an industrial society.”
Ronny finished his beer. “Smart cooky, isn’t he?”
“He’s smart, all right. But I’ve got a still better example of his
fouling up a whole planetary socio-economic system in a matter of
weeks. A friend of mine was working on a planet with a
highly-developed feudalism. Barons, lords, dukes, counts and
no-accounts, all stashed safely away in castles and fortresses up on
the top of hills. The serfs down below did all the work in the fields,
provided servants, artisans and foot soldiers for the continual