"Eric Frank Russell - Basic Right" - читать интересную книгу автора (Russell Eric Frank)

now?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," admitted Lakin.
"Neither have I. But one thing is certain: we would not he here. By this time a consolidating
expedition would have arrived and off-loaded the usual horde of desk-bound warriors, noncombatant
officials, overseers, exploiters, slave drivers, form fillers, and all the other parasites who squat all day and
guzzle the spoils that space roamers have grabbed for them."
Lakin stayed silent, finding himself unable to contradict an unpleasant truth.
"As for us, we'd be summarily ordered back into our metal cans and told to go find yet another
snatch. Right now we'd be somewhere out there in the sparkling dark, hunting around as we've been
doing for years, taking risks, suffering continual discomfort, and knowing the nature of our ultimate
reward." He pursed his lips and blew through them, making a thin slobbering sound. "The reward, my
dear fatheaded Lakin, will be a row of medals that one can neither eat nor spend, a modest pension, a
ceremonial mating, a shower of kids, old age, increasing feebleness and, finally, cremation."
"That may be so, sire, but—"
Waving him down, Zalumar continued, "I am of a mind to let the parasites seek their own prey and
thus justify their own existence. Meanwhile we'll enjoy the prize we have gained for ourselves. If greed
and ruthlessness are virtues in the many, they are equally virtues in the few. Since arriving on Terra I have
become exceedingly virtuous and I advise you to do likewise.(Remember, my dear belly-aching Lakin,
that on our home-world they have an ancient saying." He paused, then quoted it with great relish. "Go
thou and paint the long fence, Jayfat, for I am reclining within the hammock."
"Yes, sire, but—"
"And I am very comfortable," concluded Zalumar, hugging his middle.
"According to regulations, not to send a prompt report is treachery, punishable by death. They will
gas and burn the lot of us."
"If they find us, if they ever find us." Zalumar closed his eyes and smiled sleepily. "With no report, no
signal, no clue of any sort, it will take them at least a thousand years. Possibly two thousand. When they
rediscover this planet, if ever they do, we shall be gone a long, long time. I am splendidly indifferent about
how many officials go purple with fury several centuries after I am dead."
"The men think that a report to Raidan has been postponed for strategic reasons known to the senior
officers," Lakin persisted. "If ever they learn the truth, they won't like it."
"Indeed? Why shouldn't they like it? Are they so crammed with patriotic zeal that they prefer to be
bounced around on a tail of fire rather than stay here living the life they have earned and deserve?"
"It isn't that, sire."
"Then what is it?"
"A quarter of them are nearing the end of their term of service."
"They have reached it already," Zalumar pointed out. "All of us have reached it." He let go the sigh of
one whose patience is being tried. "We are in retirement. We are enjoying the Terran pension which is on
a scale far more lavish than anything Raidan offers to its conquering heroes."
"That may be—but I fear it won't prove enough."
"What more do they want?"
"Wives and children, homes of their own among their own kind."
"Pfah!"
"We can mate only with our own species," Lakin went on. "Men detained here beyond their term of
service are going to be denied that right. It is no satisfactory substitute to have absolute claim on this
world's treasures. Anyway, one soon loses appreciation of the value of something gained for nothing, one
becomes bored by getting it for the mere asking."
"I don't," assured Zalumar. "I like it, I love it."
"Every day I see windows full of gold watches," said Lakin. "They tire me. I have a gold watch which
I obtained by demanding it. I don't want fifty gold watches. I don't even want two of them. So what use
are all the others to me?"