"John Varley - Gaea 2 - Wizard" - читать интересную книгу автора (Varley John)

* 44 Thunder and Blazes
* 45 Fame and Fortune
* EPILOGUE: Semper Fidelis



PROLOGUE: Fairest of the Fair

For three million years Gaea turned in solitary splendor.
Some of those who lived within her knew of a broader space outside the great wheel. Long
before the creation of the angels avian beings flew the towering vaults of her spokes, looked out
the clerestory windows, and knew the shape of God. Nowhere in the darkness did they see another
like Gaea.
This was the natural order of things


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God was the world, the world was a wheel, and the wheel was Gaea.
Gaea was not a jealous God.
No one had to worship her, and it never occurred to anyone to do so. She demanded no
sacrifices, no temples, no choirs singing her praises.
Gaea basked in the heady energies to be found near Saturn. She had sisters scattered through
the galaxy. They too were Gods, but the distance between them enforced Gaea's theology. Her
conversations with them spread over centuries at the speed of light. She had children orbiting
Uranus. They were Gods to those living inside them, but they hardly mattered. Gaea was the Supreme
Titan, the Fairest of the Fair.
Gaea was not a distant concept to her inhabitants. She could be seen. One could talk to her.
To reach her, all one had to do was climb 600 kilometers. It was a formidable trip, but an
imaginable distance. It put heaven within reach of those daring enough to make the climb. She
averaged one visitor in a thousand years.
Praying to Gaea was useless. She did not have the time to listen to all those within her, and
would not have done so if she could. She would speak only to heroes. She was a God of blood and
sinew whose bones were the land, a God with massive hearts and cavernous arteries who nourished
her people with her own milk. The milk was not sweet, but there was always enough of it.

***

When the pyramids were being built on Earth, Gaea became aware of changes going on within
her. Her center of consciousness was located in her hub. And yet, in the manner of earthly
dinosaurs, her brain was decentralized to provide local autonomy for the more prosaic of her
functions. The arrangement kept Gaea from being swamped with detail. It worked very well for a
very long time. Around her mighty rim were spaced twelve satellite brains, each responsible for
its own region. All acknowledged Gaea's suzerainty; indeed, at first it was hardly proper to speak
of her vassal brains as separate from herself
Time was her enemy. She was intimately acquainted with death, knew its every process and
stratagem. She did not fear it. There had been a time when she did not exist, and she knew another
such time would arrive. It divided eternity, neatly, into three equal parts.
She knew Titans were subject to senility-she had listened as three of her sisters degenerated