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

Tog said nothing to him.
Ronny came to his feet. “We’ll get along. A couple of ideas
occur to me. I’ll check with you later.”
“Fine,” the agent said. He shook hands with them again. He
said, somehow more to Tog than to Ronny, “I know how
important your job is. It’s just that I’ve been pushed to the point
where I can’t operate efficiently.”
She smiled her understanding, and gave him her small,
delicate hand.
In the elevator, Ronny said to her, “Why should this sort of
thing particularly affect Section G?”
Tog said, “It’s times like this that planets drop out of the UP.
Or, possibly, get into the hands of some jingoistic military group
and start off halfcocked to provoke a war with some other planet,
or to missionarize or propagandize it.” She thought about it a
moment. “A new revolution, in government or religion, seems
almost invariably to want to spread the light. An absolute
compulsion to bring to others the new truths that they’ve found.”
She added, her voice holding a trace of mockery, “Usually the new
truths are rather hoary ones, and there are few interested in hearing
them.”
 VIII

They spent their first day in getting accommodations in a
centrally located hotel, in making arrangements, through the
Department of Justice, for the local means of exchange—it turned
out to be coinage, based on gold—and getting the feel of their
surroundings.
Evidently Delos, the capital city of the planet New Delos, was
but slowly emerging from the chaos that had followed the
assassination. A provisional government, composed of
representatives of half a dozen different organizations which had
sprung up like mushrooms following the collapse of the regime,
had assumed power. Elections had been promised and were to be
brought off when arrangements could be made.
Meanwhile, the actual government was still largely in the
hands of the lower echelons of the priesthood. A nervous
priesthood it was, seemingly desirous of getting out from under
while the getting was good, afraid of being held responsible for
former excesses.
Ronny Bronston, high hopes still in his head, looked up the
Sub-Bishop who had given them landing orders while they’d still
been aboard the Space Forces cruiser. Tog was off making
arrangements for various details involved in their being in Delos in
its time of crisis.
A dozen times, on his way over to keep his appointment with
the official, Ronny had to step into doorways or in other ways
make himself inconspicuous. Gangs of demonstrators roamed the
street, some of them drunken, looking for trouble, and scornful of
police or the military. Twice, when it looked as though he might be