"Spider Robinson - Ambiguous Oracle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

never cared enough to ask his father to help him get a waiver.
But the challenge appealed to him in his present state of mind.
Let's see, Jimmy thought. First he talked about how all men are created equal. . . .
That was a tricky one. Jimmy himself had some reason to believe that all men might be in fact created
equal. Had he not himself been classified, at the age of three, as an "innate underachiever" by the Eyecon
psychologists? And had he not, under the stimulus of his father's meaty right hand, gone on to achieve
Magna Cum Laude status in his fourth, fifth and sixth years? "They tried to tell me you wasn't as good as
everybody else," his father had whispered savagely to him once, when he was thought too young to
understand, "but I say that's crap. Everybody gets the same chance to make something of themselves,
and by God we're gonna prove it to 'em, you and me."
And yet Jimmy also remembered his father saying once, "What I do for my keep is my business, kid.
What you do for your keep is mow the lawn. What do you think this family is, anyway, a democracy?"
Jimmy had been taking an Eyecon Sociology course at the time, and he had asked his real professor
about his father's words during the question and answer period. The little grey man on the screen had
closed his eyes and said tonelessly, "Democracy is not a feasible form of government for a social group
as small as the family. In a group of that size a single individual becomes a special-interest group—any
two of them can become an unbeatable axis. It is in the vast numbers of people which characterize a
viable democracy that individual interests and inadequacies cancel out, and the common good can ..." But
at that point question and answer period ended, and the real professor's face was supplanted by the
more familiar cartoon professor who couldn't hear you.
Now that Jimmy came to think of it, however, Eyecon had a sort of vested interest in democracy.
The leap of companies like Eyeball Consolidated and Telemat from cable television franchises to
complete information networks had been duplicated in the socialist countries of the world, but it had
taken the free enterprise systems of America and Japan to create them in the first place. Their vast
Screen empires and their shotgunning diversification had been sparked by competition, and only in a
democracy is big-time competition open to more than a chosen few.
Perhaps it was no wonder that the real professor, one of the lucky few who had landed a job with a
Screen company when the bottom fell out of the education market, was an apologist for democracy.
The hell with it, Jimmy thought. I'll see if there's anything on the news now. He was getting really
worried about his father.
"…quality listing is given as highly unsatisfactory, so be sure to bring your mask along if you go
outside today. Our weather-watch also informs us that today's radiation level readings throughout the
tri-city area are 'no cause for alarm,' thanks to the valiant efforts of the Atomic Energy Commission's
emergency crews. And now for a full report here is Snaker De Landro from Gardiner's Island."
The moon-faced man on the wall was replaced by a lean, ascetic-looking man with straggly black
hair and a goatee.
"Right, Wally. 'Valiant efforts' ain't no lie at all; I mean, these guys are really together out here, you
know? The man says all you people on the other side of the Screen can pretty much walk around outside
in street clothes if you want to, as long as the wind's northeast. And when it isn't, light body armor should
be more than adequate.
"Look, lemme lay some background on ya, case ya forgot, all right? Maybe you remember the big
hassle LILCo first had when they tried to go atomic, that Shoreham deal? They tried to tell everybody
that a nuclear power plant on Long Island Sound was harmless t'the ecology. Get bent, we said, you and
me, but before long it started to look like they was right when they said they couldn't keep our
air-conditioners and Screens working without some big-ass plant someplace. So we give 'em Gardiner's
Island, and everybody's happy except maybe Gardiner, right? Now look what happens. Place is so close
to the mainland you could row out there, and they can't run a power-line that don't break. Governor fails
and BLOOIE!
"Well, what I want to know is when do I get my air-conditioning back? I mean, -you people out there
on the other side got—"