"Wil McCarthy - To Crush the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCarty Sarah)

And with that, the Dolceti are off and running in a hooting, jabbering mob that quickly settles into three
perfect V formations, like flights of geese. Not to be outdone, Lyman's Olders follow on their springy
well-leather boots, quickly overtaking the Dolceti, leaping right over the "human beings'" oversized heads
and dashing out in front, to form a smaller, faster V of their own.

"Be safe," Radmer says to Bruno, not in a kindly way but as a command. Then he, too, is sprinting
toward the enemy.

Bruno still carries Radmer's binoculars, and they're of ancient design, wellstone lenses and all. He lifts
them to his eyes now, and can clearly resolve the enemy squad: another group of twenty, moving rapidly
toward the city on feet so dainty and small that a baby girl's ballet slippers could easily fit them. They
carry no energy weapons or projectile throwers, and except for the swords, and the black iron boxes
affixed to the left sides of their gleaming faceless heads, they could easily pass for Queendom-era
household robots. Valets, yes. Scullery maids. But already Bruno knows, from bitter experience, how
fast and strong and remorseless these impervium soldiers really are. Delicate killers, bent on some
demented form of world domination for this unseen Glimmer King.

"If 'ts metal they want," says the Dolceti named Natan, "I say let 'em have it. Right through the ocular
sensors and out through the box. Bap! I want to be out there, old man, not wiping your withered old
nose."

"Your captain must have great faith in you," Bruno says, trying for some reason to be kind to this man,
who seems little more than a figment of his senile imagination. Thus far he's been driven forward by
curiosity alone--a desire to see this thing through to the end, like a play. None of it feels real.

"Fester these robots," Natan spits. He might use the word "devils" or "child molesters" in milder tones.

"They were once our servants," Bruno says to him, because he's not sure Natan even knows this.

"Really?" says the younger Dolceti guard, Zuq. He's shorter, with light green hair underneath his yellow
cap. "Well thank you very much. We've nothing but your Older mess to live in, and this really contributes.
Thanks for the Shattering, too, and the Stormlands. And for Murdered Earth while we're at it."

"You're welcome," Bruno says dryly. His grief burned out a long, long time ago, and if he starts bogging
himself down now in pointless guilt, then where will it lead? Whom will it benefit? "If you had seen the
Queendom in its heyday you'd understand. It seemed worth any price. Truthfully, it still does."

Yes, and there is a damning indictment, for he and Tamra had built, in the words of Rodenbeck, "a
house of collapsium and straw." And they knew it at the time. How could they not? It took a lifetime of
determined self-deception to ignore the generation problem, the population problem, the limits of mass
and energy and physical law. What had they been thinking?

But then, in all fairness to himself, what could he, Bruno de Towaji, have done differently? He didn't
create the Queendom; he was conscripted by it. And he hadn't known--couldn't have imagined--how
thoroughly his early discoveries would rewrite the human story. Once collapsium was out of Pandora's
hands, into the ham fists of Prometheus, Bruno had been as hard-pressed as anyone just to keep up.
Perhaps if he'd guessed the future better, or raised a gentler child, or succeeded in his later research . . .

"Well," he says, suddenly glummer, "if my apology helps, then be assured you have it. We've left some
terrible messes behind."