"Gordon R. Dickson - Childe Cycle 08 - The Chantry Guild" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dickson Gordon R)

personas had been wasted.

He told himself grimly, now, that the goal he had set himself a hundred years in the past as Donal
Graeme could only have been a false one. All he had achieved had been to prod the historic forces of
humanity into giving birth to the Others, and the eventual certainty of Old Earth's conquest and
destruction.

He could not go on this way, possibly only making matters worse. But, even thinking this, he had
weakened. Now, even with Ajela and Rukh waiting, he was going to try to find the doorway one more
time before giving up forever. He sat, filling his mind with the storehouse of knowledge represented by
the image before him, until it was all within him.

He tried, once more, to use it, to enter the place where he could use it.

And . . . Nothing. He sat unchanged, unenlightened. The knowledge lay like a dead thing within him,
useless as books forgotten as soon as they had been read, cloaked in an eternal darkness. Hat, said the
voice of Ajela, Rukh and I are already here in my office. Are you coming? Coming, he answered; and
put the image of the knowledge core, together with all the hopes of his lifetime, away for good.

CHAPTER

Sorry I'm late, Hal said. He came in and sat down in the empty float remaining of the three that were
pulled up to Ajela's large desk, now awash with paper. That had never been the case up until the last
year. Now, with Tam almost helpless physically -not because his body had been damaged, or lost any of
its natural strength, but because the living will in him to move it was fading-Ajela begrudged every
moment she could not be by his side. You weren't tempted to change your mind about coming? Ajela
asked. Her blue eyes were sharp upon him. No, said Hal.

As usual, the controls of the Final Encyclopedia had aligned his quarters with the corridor that led for a
short distance past the Director's office, which Ajeia had used since Tam had quitted it permanently, two
years before, naming Hal to succeed him as Director. Hal had had to walk only a few meters to get here.
No excuse. No delays. I just forgot the time.

Rukh Tamani, he saw, was also looking at him penetratingly. The two women had been talking as he
came in-something about Earth, of which Ajela had, somewhat unwillingly, become, de facto chief
executive. This, because simply as a practical matter, with Hal leaving everything to her in order to search
for a way into the Creative Universe, she controlled the Final Encyclopedia. More importantly she had
defacto control of the Encyclopedia's contract for the services of the Dorsai.

For the Dorsai, when they had come to the defense of Earth at Hal's urging, had been too wise from
over two hundred years of experience not to insist that they would refuse to give their lives without the
usual contract for their military use.

Knowing history, and the minds of those on worlds that had employed them, they had made their
contract with the Encyclopedia; ignoring all the frequently quarreling local governments of Earth, itself.
That had meant that, in theory, at least, the defense of Earth took its orders from this desk of Ajela's.

Hal knew, and the two women at the table knew, that the Dorsai would have come to put their lives and
skills at the service of the Mother World, in any case. The contract they had signed called for
compensation for two million trained men and women, warships and equipment, which represented a fully