[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

effort that was every adult s pleasure and duty in this new world. None of
them, even Wally, had suspected that he had chosen as he had, literally for
the sake of his own survival.
For, unlike his brother, his aunts, uncles and cousins, and everyone else he
knew, he had discovered inside himself the same iron intolerance that had made
his great-grandfather what he was.
Heinrich Bruder, child of an earlier age, would never have fitted into this
new Utopia, either, had he been Ett s age. No, he would have fought it
instead, with everything that was in him fought it until it finally destroyed
him. Ett had no intention of being destroyed. The situation was as simple as
that.
Because destruction for either his great-grandfather young again and afire
with his convictions or himself, would under the present regime be a matter of
course, if either one of them had chosen to oppose the society of the world as
it was now. The world would have no other choice than to destroy such as
either of them, or else it would be opening the door to its own destruction.
This was because the cost of what people presently had, in Ett s opinion, was
like a stifling blanket wrapped around the spirit of the human race.
Ironically for the ghost of great-grandfather Bruder, it was the same spirit
that Heinrich himself had ended up by extending over his descendants in the
house where Ett had discovered his spiritual kinship with the old man.
What the race had gained had been only at the cost of maintaining the massive
controlling machinery of the bureaucracy. It took such social machinery to
make sure that all elements of the new society would work smoothly together to
make that society viable. So much was necessary. So much, in fact, was not in
itself particularly evil; any more than any tool was evil until it became a
weapon in the hand of someone who wanted to use it to dominate others. In the
beginning, during the first few decades of the world-wide community, those who
worked in the necessary bureaucracy that staffed the machinery of a new
society, had done so with high purpose and ideals. It had been an age of a new
pioneering spirit, no doubt.
But, like all bureaucracies since the beginning of civilization, this one had
grown to become an entity in itself, with its own instinct for
self-preservation and growth, even at the cost of what it did to the very
society it had been set up to serve.
And its workers particularly its leaders, the men and women at its top
command posts, had grown into a new aristocracy of power-holders. The unitary
world-wide community had brought about a rapid development of technology in
its early years of existence, so that all could live well off the labors of
only two people out of every three. But it had also brought enormous power
into the hands of those top few, and created the need on their part to ensure
that no change occurred in the social pattern which might end up threatening
their positions.
All of this development was seen and understood by the mass of individuals in
the world as a whole, and was tacitly accepted. Life was good, everyone
agreed. Much better than at any time in history. A few people had to sit in
Page 18
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
the seats of power. Rumor and gossip about the abuse of their authority were
swept under the rug, out of sight and thought. After all, it was to
everybody s benefit not to rock the boat, was it not?
The end result was an Earth in which no true progress, but only maintenance,
was the aim. Progress was already beginning to become an evil word. Which was
why, to those few like Ett, the planet had become a world-wide prison, padded
and gilded but still a prison, in which the one real crime was to disturb in
any way the status quo. There was no compromise permitted with the official
attitudes as there had never been in his long lifetime any compromise
permitted by Heinrich Bruder with his own, personal beliefs.
The fact was, it had only been Heinrich s old age that had protected him
toward the end of his lifetime. For by then he was out of his time. He should
have been dead, in sober fact, long before Ett was born; let alone alive until
Ett and Wally had grown old enough to know him and have their lives warped by
him, as had been the lives of all the other descendants who had been trapped
into the circle of his personal power.
A literal circle of power it had been, even when Heinrich had become so
ancient that he could barely make the daily pilgrimage from the bed where he
spent his nights, to the massive armchair in the same bedroom where he spent [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

zanotowane.pl

doc.pisz.pl

pdf.pisz.pl

skierniewice.pev.pl