"Continuing Time - 98 - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

just barely; the House of November had come to Devnet System for its Gates, not
out of any interest in its real estate.
That he had found himself heading generally inSystem pleased Bodhi; the odds had
been somewhat against it. The November Guard had been unable to tell Bodhi
exactly what direction DevnetТs First Gate faced; under ordinary circumstances,
when craft entered or left the Gate at only a few hundred kilometers per hour,
it was hardly relevant. (A desperate search through those shipТs logs the House
of November had been able to get hold of, of ships that had transited DevnetТs
First Gate in the last few decades, had produced nothing; it was not the sort of
information that got recorded.)
Aside from the ninety-nine mirrors, the System might never have been visited by
intelligence. The Shivering Bastard monitored no radio, no video, no net; saw no
ships. Bodhi sat cross-legged in free fall, in loose clothing that drifted
around him. In a crystal bubble, surrounded by a bright starry sky, he ghosted
through a System gone silent.
BodhisatvaТs thoughts were troubled. The tech necessary to mount mirrors of this
size and number, across the full length of a solar system, in the brief time
since Devnet had fallen silent, was beyond anything in his experience. He
doubted the Sleem, humanityТs foes since its discovery of the tachyon star
drive, could have done it. Once perhaps, at the height of their powerЧbut not
today, broken and scattered as they were across the galaxy.
He consulted the Alternities Catalog of Intelligent Spacegoing Species, and came
up with only a few possibilities; none he liked. The Zaradin Church perhaps had
the capabilityЧand BodhiТs distrust of the Zaradin Church ran deepЧbut it would
be wildly out of character. Even if it did not drag them into a general war with
humanity, an act like this would make human governments even more unfriendly to
the Church than they already were, if that was possible. The Tamranni were a
possibility of sortsЧbut there were Tamranni upon November itself, and while
Bodhi presumed that the ancient Tamranni could have done such a thing as he saw
before him, he doubted very much that they would have. One of the older and
larger Platformer Caravans rounded out BodhiТs short list of possibles; and
again he thought it unlikely. Though a given Caravan might have managed to set
these mirrors, all the Caravans humanity had ever encountered, taken together,
could not have survived war with the mighty House of NovemberЧ
Чand whoever did this, thought Bodhi with a certain grim weariness, is going to
have to.
Unlike planets, Gates are relatively stationary with respect to the stars to
which they are anchored; by a quirk of timing, UglyТs orbit had taken it to the
side of Devnet almost directly opposite its First Gate. The Shivering Bastard
climbed up above the ecliptic and aimed its telescopes in the direction of Ugly.
It took the Bastard a moment to find the planet, even knowing where it was
supposed to be; DevnetТs First Gate is 8.3 light hours distant from Devnet
itself, nine billion kilometers distant.
Ugly was a molten rock.
Bodhi exhaled slowly. That he had expected it did not make seeing it any easier.
At the distance, all that was visible was the planetТs heat signature, but that
was sufficient; the planet radiated into space at a temperature of 2,500 degrees
Centigrade. It had never had much of an atmosphere, and now had none.
Ugly it might have been; but within the last ninety days, less than a quarter
past, thirty-four million Novembri, human and otherwise, had been alive upon its