Книга только для ознакомления
. Both are temporary. But slavery is another matter -- the most vicious habit humans fall into and the hardest to break. It starts up in every new land and it's terribly hard to root out After a culture falls ill of it, it gets rooted in the economic system and laws, in men's habits and attitudes. You abolish it; you drive it underground -- there it lurks, ready to spring up again, in the minds of people who think it is their 'natural' right to own other people. You can't reason with them; you can kill them but you can't change their minds."
Brisby sighed. "Baslim, the Guard is just the policeman and the mailman; we haven't had a major war in two centuries. What we do work at is the impossible job of maintaining order on the frontier, a globe three thousand light-years in circumference -- no one can understand how big that is; the mind can't swallow it.
"Nor can human beings police it. It gets bigger every year. Dirtside police eventually close the gaps. But with us, the longer we try the more there is. So to most of us it's a job, an honest job, but one that can never be finished.
"But to Colonel Richard Baslim it was a passion. Especially he hated the slave trade, the thought of it could make him sick at his stomach -- I've seen. He lost his leg and an eye -- I suppose you know -- while rescuing a shipload of people from a slaving compound.
"That would satisfy most officers -- go home and retire
|
