"Steve White - The Disinherited" - читать интересную книгу автора (White Steve)

Always the Indispensable Man!тАЭ The big engineer-turned-admiral
paused reflectively. тАЬStill, you may be right about their ability to
help us. They still live with the threat of warтАФthey have
professional soldiers. And theyтАЩll be able to enter this system from a
totally unexpected direction.тАЭ The other two nodded unconsciously;
it was their other great secret, and they knew what would have to be
done to preserve it. тАЬYou may also be right about their willingness
to help us against the Korvaasha, givenтАж what we now know about
them.тАЭ
His voice trailed to a halt, and no one broke the silence. They were
all rationalists, children of a culture for which rationalism had been
beyond debate for centuries. Faced with the rationally inexplicable,
they were intellectually lost. In his circumlocution, Arduin was as
one with the most superstitious of his forebears, fearful to speak
aloud the names of unknowable, ill-omened tilings.
We must face what we know to be fact, Varien thought bleakly, and
not let our inability to explain it paralyze us. LaterтАФif there is a
laterтАФwe will have time to try and account for the manifestly
impossible. In our present pass, we can only seek to take whatever
advantage we can from it.
тАЬWell,тАЭ he spoke briskly, тАЬat all events, my mind is made up. I will

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White, Steve - [The Disinherited 01] - The Disinherited


depart on schedule.тАЭ He spoke a command, and a holographic
image-of-an-image appeared, suspended above the table. It showed
stars, identified by glowing labels in the uncial Raehaniv alphabet
and linked to each other by narrow bands of pale-blue light
representing the connections between displacement pointsтАФthose
gravitational anomalies which were, as far as nearly everyone knew,
still the only way to evade the lightspeed limit. Four of the luminous
bands branched out from the star Tareil, on whose second planet
they sat; every other such display on this world of Raehan showed
three. Varien reached out and indicated the series of displacement
connections reaching outward from the fourth point through three
intervening star systems to the glowing star-symbol of Lirauva. His
eyes lingered over another such symbol floating close to Lirauva in
isolation, unconnected to any other star, with the name тАЬLandaenтАЭ
beside it in letters of light.
тАЬThe Lirauva Chain,тАЭ he declaimed, giving it the convenience-label
by which it was known to the few who knew of it at all. тАЬThe
knowledge of its existence will, after tonight, vanish from every
record in this planetary systemтАж except, of course, your living
memories. And you both know what must be done if you are in
danger of being interrogated.тАЭ The others both nodded, and for an
instant Varien gazed at Tarlann and knew irreparable loss. TarlannтАФ
brilliant student, efficient executive, the father of his
grandchildrenтАж but, somehow, never fully a son. Never enough