"Edward M. Lerner - Part III of IV - A New Order of Things" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lerner Edward M)

A NEW ORDER OF THINGS: PART III OF IV by EDWARD M. LERNER


Illustrated by John Allemand
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Skepticism is annoying but useful in a universe where things are seldom what
they seem....

Synopsis

For a century and a half, a growing interstellar community has maintained radio contact. A
vigorous commerce in intellectual property has accelerated the technical progress of all its
members. Travel between the stars seems impossible, but InterstellarNet thrives using an elegant
alternative: artificially intelligent surrogates who act as local representatives for distant societies.
Quarantine procedures strictly govern the delivery and operational environment of each alien
agent, protecting agents and their host networks from subversion by the other.

A radio message shatters this comfortable status quo. The signal comes from a habitat-sized
decelerating interstellar vessel, its unannounced trip from Barnard's Star now ninety-nine percent
complete. Citing damage en route and a shortage of supplies, the starship Victorious goes to
Jupiter rather than Earth. The starship's crew are whippet-thin, iridescent-scaled, bipedal
carnivores who call themselves Hunters. Humans refer to them as K'vithians, after their home
world of K'vith, or, informally, as Snakes (because Barnard's Star lies in the constellation
Ophiuchus, the Serpent Holder).

Not only humans are surprised by Victorious' short-notice arrival. Pashwah , the AI trade agent on
Earth for the Hunters, is also taken unawares. So are her internal sub-agents, the representatives
of the Great Clans. Pashwah rejects the starship's unauthenticated demands for Great Clan
InterstellarNet credits with which to buy supplies, but she does transmit to Victorious a translator
and human-affairs advisor: a partial copy of herself named Pashwah-qith .

Helmut Schiller is hiding from a shadowed past: As Willem Vanderkellen , he had made a major
mineral find in the Belt, only to fall afoul of a claim-jumping criminal syndicate. He has found
work as a pilot for free-lance media star Corinne Elman , who first breaks the news of the
onrushing starship.

Ambassador Hong-yee Chung heads the United Planets response team, based on Callisto. His
technical support team includes theoretical physicist Eva Gutierrez , xeno-sociologist Keizo
Matsunaga , and Interstellar Commerce Union executive and systems engineer Arthur Walsh .
Most humans have forgotten, or at least forgiven, a half-century-earlier inter-species crisis. Art is
not among them. The "Snake Subterfuge" involved a trapdoor hidden in licensed Snake
biocomputer technology, potentially compromising most human infrastructure. That crisis ended
when Pashwah was convinced that one Hunter corporation's extortion plans must not be allowed
to compromise overall inter-species relations. The biocomputer vulnerability has long been
removed.

Art finds much the Snakes have chosen to reveal about themselves replete with anomalies. His
suspicions grow, as most of Victorious remains hidden from closely chaperoned human visitors.
The K'vithian explanation for picking Jupiter as their destination rings false to Art and Eva, who
at different times worked at the UP laboratory on the Jovian moon Himalia. That is where the