"Ian McDonald - Verthandi's Ring" - читать интересную книгу автора (McDonald Ian)

that only they had died, a million deaths. The Chamber of Ever-Renewing Waters
would never permit its ace battleship crew to desert into the deep, starlit depths of
Pterimonde. Their ploads had doubtless been copied a million times into the swarm
of fast attack ships. The erstwhile crew of the Ever-Fragrant Perfume of Divinity
blinked their huge golden eyes. Over the decades and centuries, the light of the
EnemyтАЩs retreat would be visible over the entire galaxy, a new and gorgeous ribbon
nebula. Now, a handful of light-months from the long march, the shine of
hypervelocity particles impacting the deflection fields was a banner in the sky, a
starbow across an entire quadrant. And ahead, VerthandiтАЩs Ring, a star-less void
three light-years in diameter.

тАЬYou won them enough time,тАЭ Scented Coolabar said in a flicker of blue and
green. The game was over. It ended at the lowest place in the world, but it had been
won years before, she realized. It had been won the moment Rose of Jericho
diverted herself away from the Soulhouse into a meditation tree on the Holy Plains of
Hoy.

тАЬI believe so,тАЭ Rose of Jericho said, hovering a kiss away from the crystal
wall, holding herself against the insane Coriolis storms that stirred this high-gravity
domain of waters. тАЬIt will be centuries before the Clade arrives in force.тАЭ

тАЬThe Chamber of Ever-Renewing Waters could regard it as treachery,тАЭ
Harvest Moon said. Rose of Jericho touched the transparency with a tentacle.

тАЬDo I not serve them with heart and mind and life?тАЭ The soft fireworks were
fewer now; one by one they faded to nothing. тАЬAnd anyway, what would they
charge me with? Handing the Clade the universe on a plate?тАЭ

тАЬOr condemning the Clade to death,тАЭ said Scented Coolabar.

тАЬNot our Clade.тАЭ

She had been brilliant, Scented Coolabar realized. To have worked it out in
those few minutes of subjective flight, and known what to do to save the Clade. But
she had always been the greatest strategic mind of her genera-tion. Not for the first
time Scented Coolabar wondered about their lost forebear, that extraordinary female
who had birthed them from her ploaded intellect.

What is VerthandiтАЩs Ring? A closed cosmic string. And what is a closed
cosmic string? A time machine. A portal to the past. But not the past of this
universe. Any transit of a closed timelike loop led inevitably to a parallel universe. In
that time-stream, there too was war; Clade and Enemy, locked in Darwinian combat.
And in that universe, as the Enemy was driven back to gaze into annihilation,
VerthandiтАЩs Ring opened and a second Enemy, a duplicate Enemy in every way,
came out of the sky. They had handed the Clade this universe; the prize for driving
its parallel in the alternate time-stream to extinction.

Cold-blooded beneath millions of tons of deep cold pressure, Scented
Coolabar shivered. Rose of Jericho had assessed the tactical implications and made
the only possible choice: delay the Chamber of Ever-Renewing Waters and the Deep