"S. M. Stirling & David Drake - The General 01 - The Forge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

father had used on machinery-salesmen back at Hillchapel.
Hillchapel, sweet wild scent of the silverpine blowing down from
the heights, the sound of a blacksmith's hammer on ironтАФ

I am Sector Command and Control Unit
AZ12-b14-c000 Mk. XIV.

Awe struck the human; he tried to genuflect, found himself
still immobile. "Are youтАж a computer?" he asked incredulously.

yes. although not in the sense you use the term.

"What do you mean?"

i am not a supernatural being.

"What are you, then?"

i am a sentient artificial entity of photonic
subsystems tasked with the politico-military
supervision of this sector for Federation Command.

That's what a supernatural being is, dammit. Raj frowned;
that was straight out of the Creed, and even the phrasing was the
archaic dialect the priests used. First it says it isn't a
supernatural being, then it says it's working for the Holy
Federation, he thought in bewilderment. An angel.

"What do you want of me?" he continued bluntly. Although
the skeletons outside had given him a few grisly notions along
those lines.

observe. think.

Thom and the mirrored sphere vanished. This time Raj did
cry out, but it was as much wonder as fear; he was hanging
suspended in air, flying as men had done before the Fall. It took
a moment for him to recognize precisely where; the
bird's-eye-view was utterly unfamiliar, and the scene below was
not that which he knew. It was the shape of the land itself that
finally shocked recognition out of him, known from a hundred
maps. The New Residence, the city of the Governors and the
capital of the Civil Government. The near-perfect circle of the
bay, cut by a single three-kilometer channel; the buildings were
laid out on the Silver Antler hills, just in from the passage to the
sea. Off south he could see the delta of the Hemmar River, misty
in the morning light . . .

But it was not his city, not the city that Governor Vernier
ruled in this Year of the Fall 1103. Instead of tight-packed streets