JК
The Lovers :: Фармер Филип Хосе
Страница: 99 из 127Obviously, if you did not wish to be chastised or executed or taxed or dealt with in an unfair way, you would not permit it.
'Of course, if you do disagree with the Sturch or try to defy it, you do so because you are trying to realize a pseudofuture, one condemned by the Sturch. You, the individual, can't win.
'Yet, hear and listen to this: You also believe that you yourself have perfect free will to determine the future. But the future has been determined because Sigmen had gone ahead in time and arranged it. Sigmen's brother, Jude Changer, may temporarily disarrange the future and the past, but Sigmen will eventually restore the desired equilibrium.
'Let me ask and question you, how can you yourself determine the future when the future has been determined and forecast by Sigmen? One state or the other may be correct, but not both.'
'Well,' Hal said, his face hot, his chest feeling as if a heavy weight were on it, his hands shaking, 'I have thought of that very question.'
'Did you ask anyone?'
'No,' Hal said, feeling trapped. 'We were allowed to ask questions, of course, of our teachers. But that question was not on the list.'
'You mean to tell me that your questions were written out for you and you were confined to those?'
'Well, why not?' Hal said angrily. 'Those questions were for our benefit. The Sturch knew from long experience what questions students ask, so it listed them for the less bright.'
'Less bright is right,' said Fobo. 'And I suppose that any questions not on the list were considered too dangerous, too conducive to unrealistic thinking?'
Hal nodded miserably.
Fobo went on in his relentless dissection. Worse, far worse than anything he had said were his next words, for they were a personal attack on the sacrosanct self of Sigmen himself.
He said that the Forerunner's biographies and theological writings revealed him to an objective reader as a sexually frigid and woman-hating man with a Messiah complex and paranoid and schizophrenic tendencies which burst through his icy shell from time to time in religious-scientific frenzies and fantasies.
'Other men,' Fobo said, 'must have stamped their personalities and ideas upon their times. But Sigmen had and advantage over those great leaders who came before him. Because of Earth's rejuvenation serums, he lived long enough, not only to set up his kind of society, but also to consolidate it and weed out its weaknesses. He didn't die until the cement of his social form had hardened.'
'But the Forerunner didn't die,' Yarrow protested. 'He left in time.
'Of course, if you do disagree with the Sturch or try to defy it, you do so because you are trying to realize a pseudofuture, one condemned by the Sturch. You, the individual, can't win.
'Yet, hear and listen to this: You also believe that you yourself have perfect free will to determine the future. But the future has been determined because Sigmen had gone ahead in time and arranged it. Sigmen's brother, Jude Changer, may temporarily disarrange the future and the past, but Sigmen will eventually restore the desired equilibrium.
'Let me ask and question you, how can you yourself determine the future when the future has been determined and forecast by Sigmen? One state or the other may be correct, but not both.'
'Well,' Hal said, his face hot, his chest feeling as if a heavy weight were on it, his hands shaking, 'I have thought of that very question.'
'Did you ask anyone?'
'No,' Hal said, feeling trapped. 'We were allowed to ask questions, of course, of our teachers. But that question was not on the list.'
'You mean to tell me that your questions were written out for you and you were confined to those?'
'Well, why not?' Hal said angrily. 'Those questions were for our benefit. The Sturch knew from long experience what questions students ask, so it listed them for the less bright.'
'Less bright is right,' said Fobo. 'And I suppose that any questions not on the list were considered too dangerous, too conducive to unrealistic thinking?'
Hal nodded miserably.
Fobo went on in his relentless dissection. Worse, far worse than anything he had said were his next words, for they were a personal attack on the sacrosanct self of Sigmen himself.
He said that the Forerunner's biographies and theological writings revealed him to an objective reader as a sexually frigid and woman-hating man with a Messiah complex and paranoid and schizophrenic tendencies which burst through his icy shell from time to time in religious-scientific frenzies and fantasies.
'Other men,' Fobo said, 'must have stamped their personalities and ideas upon their times. But Sigmen had and advantage over those great leaders who came before him. Because of Earth's rejuvenation serums, he lived long enough, not only to set up his kind of society, but also to consolidate it and weed out its weaknesses. He didn't die until the cement of his social form had hardened.'
'But the Forerunner didn't die,' Yarrow protested. 'He left in time.