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

Athene held up the bitek sustentator, a sphere five centimetres in diameter, flesh-purple, maintained at body temperature. According to the data core on the zero-tau pod it had been kept in, the zygote inside was female; it was also the one Sinon had fathered. She bent down and pushed it gently into the waiting orifice.
This child I name Syrinx.
The little sustentator globe was ingested with a quiet wet slurp. The sphincter lips closed, and the stem sank back down out of sight. Sinon patted her shoulder, and they gave each other a proud smile.
They will flourish together, Iasius said proudly.
Yes.
Athene walked on. There were another four zygotes left to initiate, and Romulus was growing larger outside.
The Saturn habitats were keening their regret at IasiusТs call. Voidhawks throughout the solar system answered with pride and camaraderie; those that werenТt outbound with cargo abandoned their flights to flock around Romulus in anticipation.
Iasius curved gently round the non-rotational dock at the northern endcap. With her eyes closed, Athene let the affinity bond image from the voidhawkТs sensor blisters expand into her mind with superhuman clarity. Her visual reference of the habitat altered as the endcap loomed large beyond the rim of the starshipТs hull. She saw the vast expanse of finely textured red-brown polyp as an approaching cliff face; one with four concentrically arrayed ledges, as if ripples had raced out from the axis in some distant time, only to be frozen as they peaked.
The voidhawk chased after the second ledge, two kilometres out from the axis, swooping round to match the habitatТs rotation. Adamist reaction-drive spaceships didnТt have anything like the manoeuvrability necessary to land on the ledges, and they were reserved for voidhawks alone.
Iasius shot in over the edge, seeming to hover above the long rank of mushroomlike docking pedestals which protruded from the floor, before choosing a vacant one. For all its bulk, it alighted with the delicate grace of a hummingbird.
Athene and Sinon felt the gravity fade down to half a gee as the distortion field dissipated. She watched the big flat-tyred crew bus rolling slowly towards the bitek starship, elephant-snout airlock tube held upwards.
Come along, Sinon urged, his mind dark with emotion. He touched her elbow, seeing all too plainly the wish to remain during the last flight.
She nodded her head reluctantly. УYouТre right,Ф she said out loud.
IТm sorry that doesnТt make it any easier.
She gave him a tired smile and allowed him to lead her out of the lounge. The bus had arrived at the rim of the voidhawk. Its airlock tube lengthened, sliding over the upper hull surface to reach the crew toroid.
Sinon diverted his attention away from his wife to the flock of voidhawks matching pace with the ledge. There were over seventy waiting, latecomers rising into view as they left their crews behind on the other ledges. The emotional backwash from the waiting bitek starships was impossible to filter out, and he could feel his own blood singing in response.
It wasnТt until he and Athene reached the passage to the airlock that he noticed an irregularity in the flock. Iasius obligingly focused on the starship in question.
ThatТs a blackhawk! Sinon exclaimed.
Amidst the classic lens shapes it seemed oddly asymmetric, drawing the eye. A flattened teardrop, slightly asymmetric, with the upper hullТs dorsal bulge fatter than that on the lower hull; from what he supposed was prow to stern it measured an easy hundred and thirty metres; the blue polyp hull was mottled with a tattered purple web pattern.
The larger size and various unorthodox configurations which set the blackhawks apart, their divergence from the voidhawk norm (some called it evolution), came about because of their captainsТ requirement for greater power. Actually, improved combat performance was what they were after, Sinon thought acrimoniously. The price for that agility usually came in the form of a shorter lifespan.
That is the Udat, Iasius said equably. It is fast and powerful. A worthy aspirant.
ThereТs your answer, then, Athene said, using affinityТs singular-engagement mode so the rest of the crew were excluded from the exchange. She had a gleam in her eye as they paused by the airlockТs inner hatch.
Sinon pulled a sour face, then shrugged and walked off down the tube to the bus, giving her the final moment alone with her ship.
There was a hum in the corridor she had never heard before, a resonance coming from IasiusТs excitement. When she put her fingers to the sleek composite wall there was nothing, no tremor or vibration. Perhaps it was only in her mind. She turned and looked back into the toroid, the familiar confined corridors and lounges. Their whole world.
УGoodbye,Ф she whispered.
I will love you always.
________________________________________
The crew bus trundled back over the ledge towards the cliff of polyp, nuzzling up to a metal airlock set into the base. Iasius laughed uproariously across the communal affinity band; it could feel the ten eggs inside its body, glowing with vitality, their urgency to be born. Without warning it streaked away from the pedestal, straight towards the waiting flock of its cousins. They scattered in delighted alarm.
This time there was no counter-acceleration force required for the crew toroid, no protection for fragile humans. No artificial safety limits. Iasius curved sharply, pulling an easy nine gees, then flattened its trajectory to fly between the endcap and the giant metal arm of the counter-rotating dock. Weak pearl-white sunlight fell on the hull as it moved out of the ledgeТs shadow. Saturn lay ahead, the razor-sharp line of the rings bisecting it cleanly. The bitek starship headed in for the planet-swathing streamers of ice crystals and primitive molecules at twelve gees, stray dust-motes and particles brushed smoothly aside by the distortion fieldТs bow wave. Enthusiastic voidhawks raced after it, looking more and more like a stippled cometТs tail as they emerged into the light.
In the crew quarters, metal was buckling under its new and enormous weight. Empty lounges and corridors were filled with drawn-out creaking sounds, composite furniture was splintering, collapsing onto the floor, each fresh fragment hitting with the force of a hammer blow, leaving a deep indentation. The cabins and galley were awash with water that squirted from broken pipes, strange ripples quivered across the surface as Iasius performed minute course adjustments.
Iasius entered the rings, optical-band perception degrading rapidly as the blizzard raging outside the hull thickened. It curved round again, bending its path in the direction which the ring particles orbited, but always at an angle, always heading inwards towards the massive presence of the gas giant. It was a glorious game, dodging the larger chunks, the dagger fragments of ice which glittered so coldly, the frosted boulders, sable-black chunks of near-pure carbon. The bitek starship soared around them all, spiralling, diving, swooping in huge loops, heedless of the stress, of the toll its frenzy extracted from the precious patterning cells. Energy was free, coursing through the ring. Cosmic radiation, the planetТs undulating magnetic flux, the doughty gusts of solar wind; Iasius swept it all in with the distortion field, concentrating it into an abundant coherent stream which the patterning cells absorbed and redirected.
By the time it reached the Encke division the power surplus was enough to energize the first egg. Iasius let out a shrill cry of triumph. The other voidhawks responded. They had followed tenaciously, striving to match the giddy helter-skelter route Iasius had flown, boring down the passage it had broken through the ring mass, desperately deflecting the whirling particles tossed about by its wake. The leader of the flock kept changing, none could equal the speed, nor match the carefree audacity; often they were caught out by the savage turns, overshooting, blundering about in a squall of undisturbed particles. It was a test of skill as well as power. Even luck played a part. Luck was a trait worth inheriting.
When Iasius called the first time, Hyale was the closest, a mere two hundred kilometres behind. It surged forward, and Iasius relented, slowing fractionally, holding a straight course. They rendezvoused, Hyale sliding in to hold position ten metres away, their hulls overlapping perfectly. Ring particles skidded round them like snow from a ski blade.
Hyale began to impart its compositional pattern through their affinity bond, a software DNA flowing into Iasius with a sense of near orgasmic glory. Iasius incorporated the HyaleТs structural format into the vast energy squirt it discharged into the first egg.
The egg, Acetes, awoke in a blaze of wonder and exhilaration. Alive with racing currents of power, every cell charged with rapture and purpose and the urge to burst into immediate growth.
Iasius filled space with its glee.
Acetes found itself propelled out into the naked vacuum. Shattered fragments of IasiusТs hull were spinning away, a dark red hole set in midnight blue receding at a bewildering speed.
Free! the egg sang. IТm free!
A huge dark bulk hung above it. Forces it could sense but couldnТt understand were slowing its wild tumbling. The universe seemed to be composed entirely of tiny splinters of matter pervaded by glowing energy bands. Voidhawks flashed past at frightening velocities.
Yes, you are free, Hyale said. I bid you welcome to life.
What is this place? What am I? Why canТt I move like you? Acetes struggled to make sense of the scraps of knowledge fluttering around its racing mind, IasiusТs final gift.
Patience, Hyale counselled. You will grow, you will learn. The data you possess will be integrated in time.
Acetes cautiously opened its affinity sensitivity to cover the whole of SaturnТs environment, and received a chorus of greetings from the habitats, an even greater wave of acknowledgement from individual adult Edenists, excited trills from children; and then its own kind offered encouragement, infant voidhawks nesting within the rings.
Its tumbling halted, it hung below HyaleТs lower hull, looking round with raw senses. Hyale began to alter their trajectory, moving the egg into a stable circular orbit around the gas giant where it would spend the next eighteen years growing to full size.
Iasius plunged on towards the cloudscape, ploughing a dark telltale furrow through the rings for any entity watching with the right kind of senses. Its flight produced enough power to energize two more eggs, Briseis and Epopeus, while it was still in the A-ring. Hesperus emerged while it was passing through the Cassini division. Graeae, Ixion, LaocoЎn and Merope all awoke in the B-ring, to be borne away by the voidhawks whose compositional patterns they had been given.
Udat caught up with Iasius near the inner edge of the B-ring. It had been a long, arduous flight, straining even the blackhawkТs power reserves, testing manoeuvrability as seldom before. But now Iasius was calling for a mate again, and Udat glided across the gap until their distortion fields merged and the hulls almost touched. It sent Iasius its own compositional pattern through the affinity bond, swept away by a fervent gratification.
I thank you, Iasius said at the end. I feel this one will be something special. There is a greatness to it.
The egg cannoned up from its ovary, sending out a cascade of polyp flakes, and Udat was left to exert its distortion field to brake the intrigued, eager infant as Iasius departed. The puzzled blackhawk had no chance to ask what it had meant by that last enigmatic statement.
I welcome you to life, Udat said formally, when it had finally stopped the seven-metre globe from spinning.
Thank you, Oenone replied. Where are we going now?