（外文电子版资料）Larry Niven - Cloak of Anarchy.doc

CLOAK OF ANARCHY Larry Niven scanned by Emperor Dogbert Square in the middle of what used to be the San Diego Freeway, I leaned back against a huge, twisted oak. The old bark was rough and powdery against my bare back. There was dark green shade shot with tight parallel beams of white gold. Long grass tickled my legs. Forty yards away across a wide strip of lawn was a clump of elms, and a small grandmotherly Woman sitting on a green towel. She looked like shed grown there. A stalk of grass protruded between her teeth. I felt we were kindred spirits, and once when I caught her eye I wiggled a forefinger at her, and she waved back. In a minute now Id have to be getting up. Jill was meeting me at tile Wilshire exits in half an hour. But Id started walking at the Sunset Boulevard ramps, and I was tired. A minute more . . . It was a good place to watch the world rotate. A good day for it, too. No clouds at all. On this hot blue summer ,-i afternoon, Kings Free Park was as crowded as it ever gets. Someone at police headquarters had expected that. Twice the usual number of copseyes floated overhead, waiting. Gold dots against blue, basketball-sized, twelve feet up. Each a television eye and a sonic stunner, each a hookup to police headquarters, they were there to enforce the law of the Park. No violence. No hand to be raised against another-and no other laws whatever. Life was often entertaining in a Free Park. North toward Sunset, a man carried a white rectangular sign, blank on both sides. He was parading back and forth in front of a square-jawed youth on a plastic box, who was trying to lecture him on the subject of fusion power and the heat pollution problem. Even this far away I could hear the conviction and the dedication in his voice. South, a handful of yelling marksmen were throwing rocks at a copseye, directed by a gesticulating man with wild black hair. The golden basketball was dodging the rocks, but barely. Some cop was baiting them. I wondered where they had