"Hamilton, Peter F - The Night's Dawn Trilogy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F)

So now it was retaliation time. Because, as everybody knew, the next stage would be planetary bombardment. And Alkad Mzu had been surprised to find her nationalistic jingoism supplanting the academic aloofness which had ruled her life to date. Her world was being threatened.
The only credible defence was to hit Omuta first, and hit it hard. Her precious hypothetical equations had been grasped at by the navy, which rushed to turn them into functional hardware.
УI wish I could stop you from feeling so much guilt,Ф Peter had said. That was the day they had left the planet, the two of them waiting in the officersТ mess of a navy spaceport while their shuttle was prepared.
УWouldnТt you feel guilty?Ф she asked irritably. She didnТt want to talk, but she didnТt want to be silent either.
УYes. But not as much as you. YouТre taking the blame for the entire conflict. You shouldnТt do that. Both of us, all of us, everyone on the planet, weТre all being propelled by fate.Ф
УHow many despots and warlords have said that down the centuries, I wonder?Ф she retorted.
His face managed to be sad and sympathetic at the same time.
Alkad relented, and took his hand. УBut thank you for coming with me, anyway. I donТt think I could stand the navy people by myself.Ф
УIt will be all right, you know,Ф he said softly. УThe government isnТt going to release any details, least of all the name of the inventor.Ф
УIТll be able to walk straight back into the job, you mean?Ф she asked. There was too much bitterness in her voice. УAs if nothing had happened?Ф She knew it wouldnТt happen that way. Intelligence agencies from half the governments in the Confederation would find out who she was, if they hadnТt already. Her fate wouldnТt be decided by any cabinet minister on politically insignificant Garissa.
УMaybe not nothing,Ф he said. УBut the university will still be there. The students. ThatТs what you and I live for, isnТt it? The real reason weТre here, protecting all that.Ф
УYes,Ф she said, as if uttering the word made it fact. She looked out of the window. They were close to the equator here, GarissaТs sun bleaching the sky to a featureless white glare. УItТs October back there now. The campus will be knee deep in featherseeds. I always used to think that stuff was a bloody great nuisance. Whoever had the idea of founding an African-ethnic colony on a world thatТs three-quarters temperate zones?Ф
УNow thatТs a tired old myth, that we have to be limited to tropical hellholes. ItТs our society which counts. In any case, I like the winters. And youТd bitch if it was as hot as this place the whole year round.Ф
УYouТre right.Ф She gave a brittle laugh.
He sighed, studying her face. УItТs their star weТre aiming for, Alkad, not Omuta itself. TheyТll have a chance. A good chance.Ф
УThere are seventy-five million people on that planet. There will be no light, no warmth.Ф
УThe Confederation will help. Hell, when the Great Dispersal was at its peak, Earth was deporting over ten million people a week.Ф
УThose old colony-transport ships have gone now.Ф
УEarthТs Govcentral is still kicking out a good million a week even now; and there are thousands of military transports. It can be done.Ф
She nodded mutely, knowing it was all hopeless. The Confederation couldnТt even get two minor governments to agree to a peace formula when we both wanted it. What chance has the Assembly got trying to coordinate grudgingly donated resources from eight hundred and sixty disparate inhabited star systems?
The sunlight pouring through the mess window deepened to a sickly red and started to fade. Alkad wondered woozily if the Alchemist was already at work on it. But then the stimulant programs steadied her thoughts, and she realized she was in free fall, her cabin illuminated by a weak pink-tinged emergency light. People were floating around her. BeezlingТs crew, murmuring in quiet worried tones. Something warm and damp brushed against her cheek, sticking. She brought her hand up instinctively. A swarm of dark motes swam across her field of view, glistening in the light. Blood!
УPeter?Ф She thought she was shouting his name, but her voice seemed very faint. УPeter!Ф
УEasy, easy.Ф That was a crew-member. Menzul? He was holding her arms, preventing her from bouncing around the confined space.
She caught sight of Peter. Two more crew were hovering over him. His entire face was encased by a medical nanonic package which looked like a sheet of thick green polythene.
УOh, merciful Mary!Ф
УHeТs OK,Ф Menzul said quickly. УHeТll be all right. The nanonic package can cope.Ф
УWhat happened?Ф
УA squadron of blackhawks caught us. An antimatter blast breached the hull. Screwed us pretty good.Ф
УWhat about the Alchemist?Ф
Menzul shrugged loosely. УIn one piece. Not that it matters much now.Ф
УWhy?Ф Even as she asked she didnТt want to know.
УThe hull breach wrecked thirty per cent of our jump nodes. WeТre a navy ship, we can jump with ten per cent knocked out. But thirty . . . Looks like weТre stuck out here; seven light-years from the nearest inhabited star system.Ф
________________________________________
At that moment they were precisely thirty-six and a half light-years from their G3 home star, Garissa. If they had trained the BeezlingТs remaining optical sensors on the faint diamond of light far behind, and if those sensors possessed sufficient resolution, then in thirty-six years, six months, and two days they would have seen a brief surge in the apparent magnitude as OmutaТs mercenary ships dropped fifteen antimatter planet-buster bombs on their home world. Each one had a megatonnage blast equivalent to the asteroid impact which wiped out the dinosaurs on Earth. GarissaТs atmosphere was ruined beyond redemption. Superstorms arose which would rage for millennia to come. By themselves, they werenТt fatal. On Earth, the shielded arcologies had sheltered people from their heat-wrecked climate for five and a half centuries. But unlike an asteroid impact, where the energy release was purely thermal, the planet-busters each emitted the same amount of radiation as a small solar flare. Within eight hours, the rampaging storms had spread the nuclear fallout right across the planet, rendering it completely uninhabitable. Total sterilization took a further two months.
2
The Ly-cilph home planet was located in a galaxy far removed from the one which would ultimately host the human Confederation. Strictly speaking it wasnТt a planet at all, but a moon, one of twenty-nine orbiting a gas supergiant, a formidable orb two hundred thousand kilometres in diameter, itself a failed brown-dwarf star. After its accretion had finished it lacked enough mass for fusion ignition; but none the less its inexorable gravitational contraction generated a massive thermal output. What was ostensibly its nightside fluoresced near the bottom end of the visible spectrum, producing a weary emberlike glow which fluctuated in continental-sized patterns as the dense turbulent clouds raged in never ending cyclones. Across the dayside, where lemon-shaded rays from the K4 primary sun fell, the storm bands shone a lambent salmon-pink.
There were five major moons, with the Ly-cilph planet the fourth out from the cloud tops, and the only one with an atmosphere. The remaining twenty-four satellites were all barren rocks: captured asteroids, junk left over from the solar systemТs formation, all of them less than seven hundred kilometres in diameter. They ranged from a baked rock ball skimming one thousand kilometres above the clouds, from which the metal ores had boiled away like a cometТs volatiles, up to a glaciated planetoid in a retrograde orbit five and a half million kilometres out.
Local space was hazardous in the extreme. A vast magnetosphere confined and channelled the supergiantТs prodigious outpouring of charged particles, producing a lethal radiation belt. Radio emission was a ceaseless white-noise howl. The three large moons orbiting below the Ly-cilph homeworld were all inside the radiation belt, and completely sterile. The innermost of the three was chained to the ionosphere with a colossal flux tube, along which titanic energies sizzled. It also trailed a plasma torus around its orbital path, the densest ring of particles inside the magnetosphereТs comprehensive embrace. Instant death to living tissue.
The tidal-locked Ly-cilph world coasted along seventy thousand kilometres above the tenuous outer fringes of the magnetosphere, beyond the reach of the worst radiation. Occasional palpitations within the flux lines would bombard the upper atmosphere with protons and electrons, sending squalls of solar-bright borealis lights slithering and twisting silently across the rusty sky.
Atmospheric composition was an oxygen-nitrogen mix, with various sulphurous compounds, and an inordinately high water-vapour level. Mist, fog, and stacked cloud layers were the norm. Proximity to the infrared glow of the supergiant gave it a perpetual tropical climate, with the warm, wet air of the nearside constantly on the move, rushing around to the farside where it cooled, radiating its thermal load away into space, and then returning via storms which traversed the poles. Weather was a drab constant, always blowing, always raining, the strength of the gusts and downpours dictated by the orbital location. Night fell in one place, at one time. On the farside, when supergiant and planet were in an inferior conjunction, and the hellish red cloudscape eclipsed the nearsideТs brief glimpse of the sun.
It was a cycle which was broken only once every nine years, when a new force was applied to the timeless equation. A four-moon conjunction, which brought chaos and devastation to the surface with storms of biblical ferocity.
The warmth and the light had incubated life on this world, as they had on countless billions throughout the universe. There had been no seas, no oceans when the first migratory interstellar germ fell onto the pristine planet, rooting its way into the mucky stain of chemicals infecting the bubbling muddy waters. Tidal forces had left a smooth surface, breaking down mountains, grinding away at the steppes left over from the time of formation. Lakes, rivers, and flood plains covered the land, steaming and being rained on. There was no free oxygen back then, it was all combined with carbon. A solid stratum of white cloud ensured the infrared radiation found it hard to escape, even in the centre of the farside. Temperatures were intolerably high.
The first life, as always, was algae, a tough slime which spread through the water, seeping down rivers and streams to contaminate the lakes, hurried through the air by the tireless convection currents. It altered and adapted over geological eras, slowly learning to utilize the two contrasting light sources as an additional energy supply. Success, when it came, was swift, mere millennia. Oxygen poured forth. Carbon was digested. The temperature fell. The rain quickened, thinning the clouds, clearing the sky. Evolution began once more.
For millions of years, the planetТs governing nine-year cycle was of no importance. Storms and hurricanes were an irrelevance to single-cell amoebas floating sluggishly through the lakes and rivers, nor did they matter to the primitive lichens which were creeping over the rocks. But the cells adrift in the water gradually began to form cooperative colonies, and specialization occurred. Jelly-like worms appeared in the lakes, brainless, instinct-driven and metabolically inefficient, little more than mobile lichen. But it was a start. Birth and death began to replace fission as the premier method of reproduction. Mutations crept in, sometimes producing improvements, more often resulting in inviability. Failed strains were rapidly culled by merciless nature. Divergence appeared, the dawn of a million species; DNA strands lengthened, a chemical record of progress and blind alleys. Crawling creatures emerged onto the lakesides, only to be scalded by the harsh chemicals making up the atmosphere. Yet they persisted.
Life was a steady progression, following a pattern which was as standard as circumstances would allow. There were no such things as ice ages to alter the direction which this worldТs creatures were taking, no instabilities causing profound climate changes. Only the nine-yearly storms, appearing without fail, which became the dominant influence. The new animalsТ breeding cycles were structured around it, plant growth was restricted by it.
The planet matured into a jungle world, a landscape of swamps and lush verdancy, where giant ferns covered the surface from pole to pole, and were themselves webbed and choked with tenacious creepers reaching for the clear sky. Floating weeds turned the smaller lakes into vast marshlands. Elaborate ruff flowers vied for the attention of insects and birds, seed pods with skirts of hardened petals flew like kites through the air. Wood was non-existent, of course, wood required decades of uninterrupted growth to form.
Two wildly different flora genealogies sprang up, with the terminator as an unbreachable dividing line, and battleground. Farside plants adapted to the sunТs yellow light: they were capable of tolerating the long nights accompanying conjunction, the cooler temperatures. Nearside was the province of red light, falling without end: its black-leafed plants were taller, stronger, more vigorous, yet they were unable to conquer farside. Night killed them, yellow light alone was insufficient to drive their demanding photosynthesis, and the scattered refraction of red light by the thick atmosphere never carried far enough, haunting the land for a couple of hundred kilometres beyond the terminator.
The animals were more adaptive, ranging freely across farside and nearside. Dinosaur-analogues never appeared, they were too big, requiring too much time to grow. Apart from bird-analogues, lizard creatures with membranous wings, most animals were smallish, reflecting their aquatic heritage. All were cold-blooded, at home in the muddy streams and weed-clogged pools. They retained that ancestral trait out of pure necessity. For that was where their eggs were laid, buried deep and safe in the mud of the lakebeds, hidden away from the worst ravages of the storm. That was how all life survived while the winds scoured the world, as seeds and eggs and spores, ready to surge forth when stability returned in a few short weeks.
On such an inimical world life can evolve in one of two ways. There are the defeated, littered on countless planets across the cosmos, weak, anaemic creatures huddled in their dead-end sanctuaries, a little protective niche in the local ecology, never rising above a rudimentary level, their very lack of sophistication providing them with the means of continuation. Or there are the triumphant, the creatures which refuse to be beaten, which fight tooth and nail and claw and tentacle against their adversity; those for which circumstances act as an evolutionary spur. The dividing line is thin; it might even be that a devastating storm every eight years could bring genetic ruination. But nine years . . . nine proved enough time to ensure survival, allowing the denizens to rise to the challenge rather than sink back into their ubiquitous mires.
The Ly-cilph claimed such a victory. A mere eight hundred million years after life had begun on their world they had reached their pinnacle of evolution. They became transcendent entities.