"Alastair Reynolds - Minla's Flowers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Alastair)

LaterтАФmuch laterтАФTyrant announced that they had reached orbit around
Lecythus. тАЬWould you like to see the view?тАЭ the ship asked, with a playful note in its
voice.

Merlin scratched fatigue from his eyes. тАЬYou sound like you know some-thing
I donтАЩt.тАЭ

Merlin was at first reassured by what he saw. There was blue ocean down
there, swatches of green and brown landmass, large islands rather than any major
continental masses, cyclonic swirls of water-vapor clouds. It didnтАЩt necessarily mean
there were still people, but it was a lot more encouraging than finding a cratered,
radioactive corpse of a world.

Then he looked again. Many of those green and brown swatches of landmass
were surrounded by water, as his first glimpse had indicated. But some of them
appeared to be floating above the ocean completely, cast-ing shadows beneath them.
His glance flicked to the horizon, where the atmosphere was compressed into a thin
bow of pure indigo. He could see the foreshortened shapes of hovering landmasses,
turned nearly edge on. The landmasses appeared to be one or two kilometers thick,
and they all appeared to be gently curved. Perhaps half were concave in shape, so
their edges were slightly upturned. The edges were frosted white, like the peaks of
mountain ranges. Some of the concave masses even had little lakes near their
centers. The convex masses were all a scorched tawny gray in color, devoid of
water or vegetation, save for a cap of ice at their highest point. The largest shapes,
convex or concave, must have been hundreds of kilometers wide. Merlin judged that
there must have been at least ten kilometers of clear airspace under each piece. A
third of the planetтАЩs surface was obscured by the floating shapes.

тАЬAny idea of what weтАЩre looking at here?тАЭ Merlin asked. тАЬThis doesnтАЩt look
like anything in the census.тАЭ

тАЬI think they built an armored sky around their world,тАЭ the ship said. тАЬAnd
then somethingтАФvery probably Husker-level ordnanceтАФshattered that sky.тАЭ
 тАЬNo one could have survived through that,тАЭ Merlin said, feeling a rising tide of
sadness. Tyrant was clever enough, but there were timesтАФlong timesтАФwhen Merlin
became acutely aware of the heartless machine lurk-ing behind the personality. And
then he felt very, very alone. Those were the hours when he would have done
anything for companionship, including returning to the Cohort and the tribunal that
undoubtedly awaited him.

тАЬSomeone does appear to have survived, Merlin.тАЭ

He perked. тАЬReally?тАЭ

тАЬItтАЩs unlikely to be a very advanced culture: no neutrino or gravimagnetic
signatures, beyond those originating from the mechanisms that must still be active
inside the sky pieces. But I did detect some very brief radio emissions.тАЭ

тАЬWhat language were they using? Main? Tradespeak? Anything else in the
Cohort database?тАЭ