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

to simulate one of the council members if the meetings were held remotely. This
did cause a few problems for some of the members, but at least currently all the
members were terrestrialЧor avian in the case of UngphakornЧso it was
unnecessary to have, for example, aqueous support.
The room occupied nearly the entire immense building, but the sole furniture was
a circular table in the middle. Around the rim of the vast room, more like an
auditorium or theater than a boardroom, rank upon rank of seats were ranged,
ramping upwards in tiers almost to the top of the chamber. Once upon a time it
had been the boast of the world that all meetings of the Council were fully open
to the public. "All shall view the sparrow's fall."
With incredibly rare exceptions, none of the seats had been filled in nearly a
thousand years.
Like the Knights of the Round Table, all who sat at the table were considered
equal. There was no specific head of the committee, the gavel being passed in
rota or held by whoever called a special council. There were thirteen chairs,
for the thirteen Key-holders who governed the Web, but only eleven were normally
filled. Over the three-thousand-year lifetime of the Web, the control Keys had
changed hands and fallen in and out of "licit" control. At the moment two were
in the hands of individuals who existed outside of the mainstream and who
refused, by and large, to work with the committee.
Most of the rest of the room replicated the interior of the ancient Greek
Parthenon. The exception was the ceiling, which was covered with a mural of the
ascent of man through the ages, culminating in the current era. It started with
panels of early hunter-gatherers, showing their technology and cultural motifs,
then progressed up through early agriculture, metallurgy, the discovery of
philosophy and scientific method, democracy, industry, the rights of man,
information technology, advanced biology, quantum engineering and finally an
almost God-like succession as the combination of the advances led to a world of
peace and plenitude for all.
Paul often came into the room and stared up at the mural, tracking the progress
and wondering where they had gone wrong.
He looked around at the gathered Council and carefully schooled his features to
prevent any hint of revulsion crossing them; surely the Council that ran the
Earth could be limited to true humans!
But it was not. Ishtar was close, but so Changed as to be clearly beyond any
semblance of true humanity. As to Ungphakorn and CantorЕ
Now he pointedly avoided looking at those members of the Council who were not
human in appearance as he tapped his gavel and called the meeting to order.
"I'm called this meeting to discuss the current population challenge," he said,
then paused as Ungphakorn ruffled its feathers.
"I fail to sssee where that isss any of our concccern," the council member said,
rewrapping itself on its perch. Its body had been formed into a quetzacoatl: a
long, multicolored, brightly feathered, winged-serpent, the sex specifically
neuter. The mouth of the serpent had been modified to permit human speech but it
still caused a sibilant hissing on many words.
Paul had come to the conclusion that Ungphakorn did it just to annoy him.
"It is our concern as the last vestige of government," Bowman replied, looking
directly at Sheida. "The population of the earth has fallen below one billion
people. Given current trends in birth rate, the human race, in any form, will be
gone in less than a thousand years; barely five generations. We have to take