"David Weber - Dahak 03 - Heirs of Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weber David)

"Hold off on building the thing, Tao-ling," he said. "Do whatever you want with the research—hell,
we may need it against the Achuultani master computer!—but don't produce any hardware without
checking with me."
"Of course, Your Majesty."
"Any other surprises for us?"
"Not of such magnitude. Dahak and I will prepare a full report for you by the end of the week, if you
wish."
"I wish." Colin turned his eyes to Hector MacMahan. "Any problems with the Corps, Hector?"
"Very few. We're making out better than Gerald in terms of manpower, but then, our target force
level's lower. Some of our senior officers are having trouble adjusting to the capabilities of Imperial
equipment—most of them are still drawn from the pre-Siege militaries—and we've had a few training
snafus as a result. Amanda's correcting most of that at Fort Hawter, and the new generation coming up
doesn't have anything to unlearn in the first place. I don't see anything worth worrying about."
"Fine," Colin said. If Hector MacMahan didn't see anything worth worrying about, then there was
nothing, and he turned his attention to Horus. "How're we doing on Earth, Horus?"
"I wish I could tell you the situation's altered, Colin, but it hasn't. You can't make these kinds of
changes without a lot of disruption. Conversion to the new currency's gone more smoothly than we had
any right to expect, but we've completely trashed the pre-Siege economy. The new one's still pretty
amorphous, and a lot of people who're getting burned are highly pissed."
The old man leaned back and folded his arms across his chest.
"Actually, people at both ends of the spectrum are hurting right now. The subsistence-level
economies are making out better than ever before—at least starvation's no longer a problem, and we've
made decent medical care universally available—but virtually every skilled trade's become obsolete, and
that's hitting the Third World hardest. The First World never imagined anything like Imperial technology
before the Siege, and even there, retraining programs are mind-boggling, but at least it had a high-tech
mind-set.
"Worse, it's going to take at least another decade to make modern technology fully available, given
how much of our total effort the military programs are sucking up. We're still relying on a lot of
pre-Imperial industry for bread-and-butter production, and the people running it feel discriminated
against. They see themselves as stuck in dead-end jobs, and the fact that civilian bio-enhancement and
modern medicine will give them two or three centuries to move up to something better hasn't really sunk
in yet.
"Bio-enhancement bottlenecks don't help much, either. As usual, Isis is doing far better than I
expected, but again, the folks in the Third World are getting squeezed worst. We've had to prioritize
things somehow, and they simply have more people and less technical background. Some of them still
think biotechnics are magic!"
"I'm glad I had someone else to dump your job on," Colin said with heartfelt sincerity. "Is there
anything else we can give you?"
"Not really." Horus sighed. "We're running as hard and as fast as we can already, and there simply
isn't any more capacity to devote to it. I imagine we'll make out, and at least I've got some high-powered
help on the Planetary Council. We learned a lot getting ready for the Siege, and we've managed to avoid
several nasty mistakes because we did."
"Would it help to relieve you of responsibility for Birhat?"
"Not much, I'm afraid. Most of the people here are tied directly into Gerald's and Tao-ling's
operations, so I'm only providing support for their dependents. Of course—" Horus flashed a sudden grin
"—I'm sure my lieutenant governor thinks I spend too much time off Earth anyway!"
"I imagine he does." Colin chuckled. "But then my lieutenant governor probably felt the same way."
"Indeed he did!" Horus laughed. "Actually, Lawrence has been a gift from the Maker," he added
more seriously. "He's taken a tremendous amount of day-to-day duties off my back, and he and Isis
make a mighty efficient team on the enhancement side."