"Traviss,.Karen.-.wess'har.wars.1.-.City.of.Pearl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Traviss Karen)

CITY
OF
PEARL

KAREN TRAVISS



2198 in the calendar of the gethes.

GOVERNMENT WOR

The bot was immune to the snow, and so was Aras. He watched it working its way across the surface of the stone with a blind purpose that defied the ice. Words emerged behind it like droppings.

GOVERNMENT WORK IS

A little shaving of ice drifted down as the bot moved. It cut steadily into a block of stone so hard that only an obsessive would have bothered to try to carve it, an odd choice of material in a construction made otherwise of composites and alloys.

But the bot had no passions as far as Aras could see; its single-mindedness must have been by proxy for its masters. As it finished gouging the last letter out of the stone, it executed a 90-degree turn, moved down the supporting column to the ground and plopped into the snow to trundle away, trailing a wake of parallel lines

GOVERNMENT WORK IS GODТS WORK.

Aras mimicked the lettering, copying it into the unspoiled snow beside him with a steady claw. He considered it, then brushed it away. What was УGodФ? And why did it care about government, especially so far from home? They were just words. He was only beginning to come to terms with the gethesТ language, and many things still baffled him.

УIs that gethes?Ф asked the apprentice navigator. It was his first trip to the quarantine zone, and he was suited and sealed against invisible dangers, those that would never again bother Aras. A slight tilt of the navigatorТs head steered ArasТs attention to a low platform on tracks, rumbling around the perimeter. УThey look like that?Ф

УBot,Ф said Aras, using the gethes word he had gleaned from transmissions. УA machine they sent ahead of them to build a habitat. Some are fully intelligent. That one is not. ItТs a load-carrier.Ф Aras stood up and wandered into its path; it paused and corrected its course to avoid him. He blocked it a few more times and then tired of the game. УIt cannot distinguish me from a gethes.Ф

The gethes were definitely coming. They had known that for a long time, from the first signal that was intercepted, but they were imminent now. There had been a stream of data directed to the bots about the first gethesТ intentions and needs. Now Aras had satisfied his curiosity and allowed the habitat to begin to take shape, and judged it was time to act.

He wandered through the growing compound unchallenged. There were no security measures to keep him out; bots scattered from his path. But there was no damage he wished to do, nor information he could not easily glean from the intercepted data transmissions.

The navigator turned and labored through the drifts until the irregular crunch of his boots vanished. The youngster was from the warmlands and even less able to tolerate freezing conditions than the average wessТhar.

But Aras was not an average wessТhar. And nor were the comrades he had lost.

Goodbye, Cimesiat. IТm truly sorry. Aras glanced around the landscape. There was no funeral to be held here, no remains of his friend to re-enter the cycle of life, so he simply remembered. In the coming season there would be black grasses as far as the eye could see, the sharp and glossy blades that grew nowhere else on BezerТej. If only they had never landed on this islandЧif only the isenj had never landed hereЧthen Cimesiat would have died naturally at the proper time. Instead, he had been driven to destroy himself, the fifty-eighth of the remaining cТnaatat troops to take his own life since the last of the wars. Peace made you purposeless if you let it. Aras had found his purpose in another war, a slower and more considered battle to protect BezerТej. One day he would win it, and he thought of his comrades and wondered if it was a victory for which he would be prepared.

There were just three of his squadron left, without family, without purpose, without any of the things that made a wessТhar want to live. But I have my world, Aras thought. I have duties here enough for another three lifetimes, now that the gethes are coming.

He squatted and dug his claws into the snow, pushing down into the hard-frozen soil beneath as if he were connecting with it in the disposal rite that Cimesiat would never have. УForgive me,Ф he said aloud. УI should have known better.Ф

There was silence again. It was a crisp and perfect calm, except for the occasional distant clank of closing hatches and the hum of motors. This was a dead homestead, industrial and unwelcoming, without life or community. The gray composite walls curved into a featureless roof.

Buildings always bothered Aras. This one was conspicuous, placed where anyone could see it. Imposing on the natural landscape was a vulgar act, an alienТs taste, not a wessТhar practice. The arrogance of it nagged at him. He stood up and stared at the horizon north of the island. All the lights on the shoreline had gone; after centuries all traces of isenj building had been reclaimed and erased by the wilderness. It had taken far less time to erase the isenj themselves.

So gethes built to be seen, too. That was all he could note. He followed the path churned up by the navigator all the way back to the ship, to avoid leaving any more of a mark than was absolutely necessary on the featureless whiteness.

УWe must take it all away,Ф Aras said. УTheir construction must be moved from this place.Ф