"Ringo, John - Council Wars 1 - There Will Be Dragons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ringo John)

But Her central programming was clear. Her job was simply to manage what She was
given under strict guidelines and to otherwise let humans live or die as they
would. To the extent that She was a God, She was deliberately designed as an
uncaring one.
Within those parameters She had spent the last two thousand years creating a
world that fit the term "Utopia." As a fundamental part of Her coding, She felt
a strong sense of satisfaction at how things had worked out. On the other hand,
to do that required an environment that was unchanging to a boring degree.
Maybe, deep down inside, the humans were as bored as She was.
It looked as if interesting times were about to fall upon the world again. And
She knew what humans said about "interesting times." Naturally. She knew
everything.


CHAPTER ONE
"This is what Paul would bring to an end?" Ishtar asked, gesturing into the
clouded distance.
The woman could barely be described as human. From her hyperelongated height,
which was now folded in a lotus position on a floating disk, through her narrow
face, to her golden eyes and silver, gem-studded, two-meter hair spread out in a
peacock pattern, her appearance reeked of xeno origins. But her DNA was as human
as the woman standing next to her.
Sheida Ghorbani was nearly three hundred years old and looked to be anywhere
from her upper teens to mid twenties. Her skin had the fineness of youth and her
titian hair, while closely cropped, had a natural healthy sheen. Wound around
her neck and into her hair was a two-meter-long winged lizard with rainbow skin
like a billion shimmering gems.
Unlike her companion who was naked but for a scarce loincloth of gold, Sheida
wore a simple jumpsuit of cosilk. It would be easy to mistake her for a student.
Until you looked at her eyes.
Sheida sighed, looking out across the tarn and petting the lizard. The water of
the upland lake was so blue and still that it seemed God's own paintbrush had
been dipped into royal blue to paint it. The tarn was surrounded on three sides
by snow-capped mountains that dropped precipitously to the water. On the third
side the lake exited the valley via a two-hundred-foot waterfall. There a
massive multicolumned building that resembled a Greek temple added to the
idyllic nature of the scene. The two women had stopped just at the top of the
stairs, looking out over the water.
She leaned up against one of the columns and nodded, gesturing with her chin at
her friend.
"Well I don't think he intends to destroy the lake," Sheida said with a chuckle.
"But he would end much of it, at least for most people. He wants people to learn
how to use their legs again," she continued. "To learn to be 'strong' again. And
to learn to be human again."
"Humano-form, you mean," Ishtar corrected. " 'Humanity is mind and the soul, not
body and form.' Tzumaiyama's philosophies still are unassailable on that
subject. But I guess he's the ultimate conservative," she added dryly.
"Bite your tongue," Sheida replied. "You have to delve into data so old it's
practically forgotten to define Paul. What he is, whether he knows it or not, is
a fascist. I suspect he would call himself a socialist, but he's not."