"Engines Of Light - 03 - Engine City" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

Having their computers hacked into by a carbonaceous chondrite came as a surprise to the cosmonauts. In the sudden glut of information, they failed to notice the instructions for a radical new technology of space travel until it was almost too late. Politics dictated first that the contact should be secret, then that it should be public. Political and military conflicts resulted in a mutiny on the station. Before the space marines of the European PeopleТs Army could arrive to suppress it, the cosmonauts built a lightspeed drive that took the entire station away. They thought they had understood how to navigate it. They had not. It returned to its default setting, and arrived at the Second Sphere.

Before their departure, one of the cosmonauts made sure that the instructions distributed by the god would not be ignored, and could not be hidden. The gods approved. Soon the noisy humans would be somebody elseТs problem.


The Very City Babylon

2 The Advancement of Learning


The jump is instantaneous. To a photon, the whole history of the universe may be like this: over in a flash, before itТs had time to blink. To a human, itТs disorienting. One moment, youТre an hour out from the last planet you visitedЧthen, without transition, youТre an hour away from the next.

Volkov spent the first of these hours preparing for his arrival, conscious that he would have no time to do so in the second.

My name is Grigory Andreievich Volkov. I am two hundred and forty years old, I was born about a hundred thousand years ago, and as many light-years away: Kharkov, Russian Federation, Earth, in the year 2018. As a young conscript, I fought in the Ural Caspian Oil War. I was with the first troops to enter Marseilles and to bathe their sore feet in the waters of the Mediterranean. In 2040, I became a cosmonaut of the European Union, and three years later made the first human landing on the surface of Venus. In 2046 I volunteered for work on the space station Marshal Titov, which in 2049 was renamed the Bright Star. It became the first human-controlled starship. In it I traveled to the Second Sphere. For the past two centuries I have lived on Mingulay and Croatan.

This is my first visit to Nova Terra. I hope to bring you . . .

What? The secret of immortality?

Yes. The secret of immortality. That would do.

Strictly speaking, what he hoped to bring was the secret of longevity. But he had formed an impression of the way science was conducted on Nova Terra: secular priestcraft, enlightened obscurantism; alchemy, philosophy, scholia. A trickle of inquiry after immortality had exhausted hedge-magic, expanded herbalism, lengthened little but grey beards and the index of the Pharmacopia, and remained respectable. Volkov expected to be introduced to the Academy as a prodigy. Before the shaving-mirror, he polished his speech and rehearsed his Trade Latin.

The suds and stubble swirled away. He slapped a stinging cologne on his cheeks, gave himself an encouraging smile, and stepped out of the cramped washroom. The shipТs human quarters were sparse and provisional. In an emergency, or at the ownersТ convenience, they could be flooded. In normal operation, it was usual to travel in one or other of the skiffs, which at this moment were racked on the vast curving sides of the forward chamber like giant silver platters. The air smelled of paint and seawater; open channels and pools divided the floor, and on the walls enormous transparent pipes contained columns of water that rose or fell, functioning as lifts for the shipТs crew. Few humans, and fewer saurs, were about in the chamber. Volkov strolled along a walkway. At its end, a low rail enclosed the pool of the navigator. Eyes the size of beach balls reflected racing bands of color from the navigatorТs chromatophores and the surrounding instrumentation. Wavelets from the rippling mantle perturbed the water. Lashing tentacles broke the surface as they played over the controls.

Volkov was halfway up the ladder to the skiff in which he had spent most, and intended to spend the rest, of the brief journey, when the lightspeed jump took place. The sensation was so swift and subtle that it did not endanger his step or grasp. He was aware that it had happened, that was all. In a moment of idle curiosityЧfor heТd never been within sight of a shipТs controller at such a momentЧhe glanced sideways and down, to the watery cockpit twenty-odd meters below.

The navigator floated in the middle of the pool. His body had turned an almost translucent white. Volkov was perturbed, but could think of nothing better to do than scramble faster up the ladder to the skiff.

The door opened and he stepped inside, rejoining his hosts. Esias de Tenebre stood staring at the display panel, as though he could read the racing glyphs that to Volkov meant nothing. Feet well apart, hands in his trouser pockets, his stout and muscular frame bulked further by his heavy sweater, his shock of hair spilling from under his seamanТs cap. Though in the rough-duty clothes that merchants traditionally wore on board ship, he had all the stocky and cocky dignity of HolbeinТs HenryЧone who did not kill his wives, all three of whom stood beside him. Lydia, the daughter of Esias and Faustina, lounged on the circular seat around the central engine fairing behind her parents, returning VolkovТs appeasing look with sullen lack of interest. Black hair you could swim in, brown eyes you could drown in, golden skin you could bask in. Her oversized sweater and baggy canvas trousers only added to her charm. The other occupant of the vehicle was its pilot, Voronar, who sat leaning forward past Esias.

УWhatТs going on?Ф

The saurТs elliptical eyes spared Volkov a glance, then returned to the display.

УNothing out of the ordinary,Ф said Voronar. His large head, which lent his slender reptilian body an almost infantile proportion, tipped forward, then nodded. УWe are an hour away from Nova Terra.Ф

УCould you possibly show us the view?Ф said Esias.

УYour pardon,Ф said Voronar.

He palmed the controls, and the entire surrounding wall of the skiff became pseudotransparent, patching data from the shipТs external sensors and automatically adjusting brightness and contrast: Nova SolТs glare was turned down, the crescent of Nova Terra muted to a cool blue, its night side enhanced. Scattered clusters of crowded lights pricked the dark like pleiads.

УThatТs a lot of cities,Ф Volkov said.

Compared with anywhere else heТd seen in the Second Sphere, if not with the Earth he remembered, it was.

УThereТs only one that matters,Ф said Esias. He did not need to point it out.