"Brian Daley - Requiem For a Ruler of Worlds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Daley Brian)

no objection so long as they left him in peace.
Doubtless enemies in many places were keeping their own shadow-vigil. The repercussions of his
death would be felt far beyond the relatively small volume of the nineteen systems he ruled.
His momentary twinge had been swallowed up in the deep, steady aching he'd endured for so long.
Now he watched the stormclouds roll in, right on schedule. He nodded without realizing that he did. His
engineers were expensive, but they were the bestтАФand they asked no questions.
He knew he could trust them to keep their mouths shut, too. Good girls, even though Sonya's eyes
had been brimming over when he'd given the order. Everyone knew his fondness for good, bracing
weather. At least, he tweaked himself, you're fond of it now that you don't have to campaign in it
anymore.
The black avalanche of clouds engulfed the sky, spreading and advancing. As he watched, it blotted
out The Strewn, the gemwork open-star cluster that ornamented Epiphany's night as though a divine hand
had sown seeds plucked from the First Light. Lightning danced among the clouds, green-white, followed
by thunder; the air freshened with ozone.
On Old Earth-now shunned, mocked, having turned her back on her progenyтАФon Old Earth his age
would be reckoned at ninety-three. In that time he'd been slave, murderer, outlaw, rebel, and conqueror.
Hated and loved, he'd never quite believed that he deserved either.
Weir had brought along a small sound unit. Almost missing the control in his trembling, he put finger to
touchpad. Music surged, sinister but lush and high-flown.
It was the overture to an opera written long ago on Transvaal, a world that Weir had been about to
draw into his expanding sphere of influence. A thinly disguised metaphorical tale sponsored by that
planet's government, it had been composed by a young genius who'd unleashed his full powers. Weir was
portrayed as a kind of Mephistopheles who was defeated in the course of the story.
But Weir took a perverse pleasure in the grand and undisguised majesty of the music, the
unrestrainedness of it. The young composer had died in the final battle for his home planet. Weir's forces
took over, doing away with the slave trade that had thrived there and executing most of the plutocrats
who'd run the place.
He loved the music, though, and was amused by it. He was not as evil as he was often portrayed, he
was convinced; nor was he as virtuous.
He longed to stand and stretch, fill his lungs with the charged air, but his body had long since failed
him. Perhaps on one of the truly advanced worlds, one that had missed the dark age after the sundering
of the old interstellar unity and the end of the Second Breath of humankind, he could have had more
years of life. But the new techniques were unavailable within his jurisdiction, and he refused to leave it.
That had left him infirm, wed to the sustaining machines.
Until tonight.
Still, he'd extended his influence, played his part in the great conflicts and struggles that had given birth
to the Third Breath of the human race.
"The Third Breath!" It was a labor even to murmur the words, but a joy nonetheless. He loved their
sound, he who ruled nineteen star systems and wore an owner's code tattooed into his skin, and a
subdural implant that broadcast it.
 The Third Breath, no longer being born but passionately alive. Change and growth and light; he
welcomed them. Strange attractors. A habitual musing came to him as his thoughts wandered. Strange
attractors тАж
When Weir realized he was no longer alone, he was half dreaming of a girl he'd known for a brief
moment in his youth. Her brown hair, ringlets of it, with its highlights of gold, had flown in the wind of a
landing field. Her eyes, black and deep, had reflected the glare of a binary stellar system and held
everything else to themselvesтАФat first.
They'd come to love one another. For nearly eighty years, he wondered what had become of her, and
never, for all his efforts, had been able to find out.
Then, emerging from his reverie, he saw the figure. Many in Frostpile were waiting with him, waiting