"Charles Stross - Singularity Sky" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

By the end of that day, when the manna had begun to fall from orbit and menтАЩs dreams were coming to
life like strange vines blooming after rain in the desert, Rudi and his familyтАФ sick mother, drunken
uncle, and seven siblingsтАФwere no longer part of the political economy of the New Republic.

War had been declared.


file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruiswij...en/spaar/Charles%20Stross%20-%20Singularity%20Sky.html (3 of 259)19-2-2006 17:16:19
 Singularity Sky



Deep in the outer reaches of the star system, the FestivalтАЩs constructor fleet created structure out of dead
mass. The Festival fleet traveled light, packed down into migratory starwisps that disdained the
scurrying FTL of merely human clades. When it arrived, fusion pods burned bright as insectile A-life
spawned furiously in the frigid depths of the outer system. Once the habitats were complete and moved
into orbit around the destination planet, the Festival travelers would emerge from aestivation, ready to
trade and listen.

RochardтАЩs World was a backwater colony of the New Republic, itself not exactly the most forward-
looking of post-Diaspora human civilizations. With a limited industrial base to attract tradeтАФlimited by
statute, as well as by abilityтАФfew eyes scanned the heavens for the telltale signatures of visiting ships.
Only the spaceport, balanced in ground-synchronous orbit, kept a watch, and that was focused on the
inner-system ecliptic. The Festival fleet had dismantled a gas giant moon and three comets, begun work
on a second moon, and was preparing to rain telephones from orbit before the Imperial Traffic Control
Bureau noticed that anything was amiss.

Moreover, there was considerable confusion at first. The New Republic was, if not part of the core
worlds, not far out of it; whereas the FestivalтАЩs origin lay far outside the light cone of the New
RepublicтАЩs origin, more than a thousand light-years from old anarchist Earth. Although they shared a
common ancestry, the New Republic and the Festival had diverged for so many centuries that everything
тАФfrom their communications protocols to their political economies, by way of their genomeтАФwas
different. So it was that the Festival orbiters noticed (and ignored) the slow, monochromatic witterings
of Imperial Traffic Control. More inexplicably, it did not occur to anybody in the Ducal palace to
actually pick up one of the half-melted telephones littering their countryside, and ask, тАЬWho are you and
what do you want?тАЭ But perhaps this was not so surprising; because by midafternoon Novy Petrograd
was in a state of barely controlled civil insurrection.


Burya Rubenstein, the radical journalist, democratic agitator, and sometime political prisoner (living in
internal exile on the outskirts of the city, forbidden to return to the father planetтАФto say nothing of his
mistress and sonsтАФfor at least another decade) prodded at the silvery artifact on his desk with a finger
stained black from the leaky barrel of his pen. тАЬYou say these have been falling everywhere?тАЭ he stated,
ominously quietly.

Marcus Wolff nodded. тАЬAll over town. Misha wired me from the back country to say itтАЩs happening
there, too. The DukeтАЩs men are out in force with brooms and sacks, picking them up, but there are too
many for them. Other things, too.тАЬ