"Anderson, Poul - 1974 Flandry 11 - A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows (Knight Fl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Poul)

Gospodar of Dennitza is our latest problem child. But you've also said
you were working Sector Arcturus: almost diametrically opposite, and
well inside those vaguenesses we are pleased to call the borders of the
Empire. Tell me, then--you've been almighty unspecific about your
operations, and I supposed that was because you were under security, and
didn't pry--tell me, as far as you're allowed, what does the space
around Arcturus have to do with Dennitza? With anything in the Taurian
Sector?"

"I stayed mum because I didn't want to spoil this occasion," Hazeltine
said. "From what Mother told me, I expected fun, when I could get a
leave long enough to justify the trip to join you; but you've opened
whole universes to me that I never guessed existed." He flushed. "If I
ever gave any thought to such things, I self-righteously labeled them
Vice.'"

"Which they are," Flandry put in. "What you bucolic types don't realize
is that worthwhile vice doesn't mean lolling around on cushions eating
drugged custard. How dismal! I'd rather be virtuous. Decadence requires
application. But go on."

"We'll land now, and I'll report back," Hazeltine said. "I don't know
where they'll send me next, and doubtless won't be free to tell you.
While the chance remains, I'll be honest. I came here wanting to know
you as a man, but also wanting to, oh, alert you if nothing else,
because I think your brains will be sorely needed, and it's damn hard to
communicate through channels."

Indeed, Flandry admitted.

His gaze went to the stars in the viewscreeen. Without amplification,
few that he could see lay in the more or less 200-light-year radius of
that rough and blurry-edged spheroid named the Terran Empire. Those were
giants, visible by virtue of shining across distances we can traverse,
under hyperdrive, but will never truly comprehend; and they filled the
merest, tiniest fragment of the galaxy, far out in a spiral arm where
their numbers were beginning to thin toward cosmic hollowness. Yet this
insignificant Imperial bit of space held an estimated four million suns.
Maybe half of those had been visited at least once. About a hundred
thousand worlds of theirs might be considered to belong to the Empire,
though for most the connection was ghostly tenuous ... It was too much.
There were too many environments, races, cultures, lives, messages. No
mind, no government could know the whole, let alone cope.

Nevertheless that sprawl of planets, peoples, provinces, and
protectorates must somehow cope, or see the Long Night fall. Barbarians,
who had gotten spaceships and nuclear weapons too early in their
history, prowled the borders; the civilized Roidhunate of Merseia
probed, withdrew a little--seldom the whole way--waited, probed again
... Rigel caught Flandry's eye, a beacon amidst the great enemy's