"Mark S. Geston - The Allies" - читать интересную книгу автора (Geston Mark S)

The Minds read my thoughts. "There is no time or space for them. This is the
best we can do. We have always wished it would not be so."

"Always?" They were only activated six months ago.

Then we left. I imagined twenty-five square kilometers of the prairie west of
Keaney erupting as the Sixth Ship lifted up from its building cavern. There
should have been a dust storm overhead, concealing it with lightning. The robots
in the city would feign indifference. I wondered how long they would continue to
go about their simulated business after we left. The Minds told me they would
until the enemy arrived to return Nebraska to grassland and restore the buffalo.

I felt nothing seated at the center of the Ship, acceleration canceled out by
her local gravity. Although I was the Captain, our escape was entirely up to the
Ship's Minds. Only they were quick and resourceful enough to evade the enemy if
we were detected; only they could manage her defensive systems.

My compartment was the only private room in the Ship. It was twenty meters m
diameter, and sections of it could be closed off as I wished. I had it all open
for the departure and reclined before the bridge console, which held an array of
screens reporting the Ship's general situation and what it perceived of the
space around it. Contradictorily, the rest of the compartment was intended to
distract and soothe me. My psychological handlers had chosen to project
holographic images of the palace grounds at Nymphemburg, near Munich, in
opposition to the walls; there was a blue sky on the ceiling overhead and my
furniture was seemingly placed on the meticulous lawn between the pool and the
topiary maze.

The Amalienburg Pavilion was visible through the trees on my left. It was an
empty though beautifully rendered architectural study. I had not expected any
people strolling across the lawn. Such homunculi could have provoked a number of
counterproductive responses and associations, so they were naturally left out.
But the programmers had not included any animals either; no squirrels or foxes,
or even any of the black swans for which the palace had been so famous. The only
thing that moved was the water over the artful cataracts and the branches of the
oaks and linden trees.

The cyber-dukes and duchesses must have killed their greyhounds anti mastiffs
before they left.

We left the atmosphere undetected. I could not believe our good fortune. The
Ship's local gravity came up to full effect and there was no sense of motion. I
carefully put on my armor and cycled the manipulators attached to it. Depending
on one's mood, I knew would look like Shiva or a crab, but the illusion of
Nymphemburg overlaid the room's mirrors so I saw nothing to resolve this
speculation.

I descended on a lift to where the quantum dimensions were kept imprisoned by a
conventional reality. Although the Ship's Minds would plan and execute every
step of our escape across the void, it was still up to me to unfold the quantum