"David Drake - Belisarius 1 - An Oblique Approach" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

An Oblique Approach
by David Drake and Eric Flint

[this book ripped from Baen Free Library. Please go to
http://www.baen.com/library/ for more]

Copyright (c) 1998 by David Drake and Eric Flint

ISBN: 0-671-87865-4

Cover art by Keith Parkinson

First printing, March 1998

Electronic version by WebWright
http://www.webwrights.com



TO LUCILLE
The first facet was purpose.
It was the only facet. And because it was the only facet, purpose had neither
meaning nor content. It simply was. Was. Nothing more.
purpose. Alone, and unknowing.
Yet, that thing which purpose would become had not come to be haphazardly.
purpose, that first and isolated facet, had been drawn into existence by the
nature of the man who squatted in the cave, staring at it.
Another man -- almost any other man -- would have gasped, or drawn back, or
fled, or seized a futile weapon. Some men -- some few rare men -- would have
tried to comprehend what they were seeing. But the man in the cave simply
stared.
He did not try to comprehend purpose, for he despised comprehension. But it
can be said that he considered what he was seeing; and considered it,
moreover, with a focused concentration that was quite beyond the capacity of
almost any other man in the world.
purpose had come to be, in that cave, at that time, because the man who sat
there, considering purpose, had stripped himself, over long years, of
everything except his own overriding, urgent, all-consuming sense of purpose.
***
His name was Michael of Macedonia. He was a Stylite monk, one of those holy
men who pursued their faith through isolation and contemplation, perched atop
pillars or nestled within caves.
Michael of Macedonia, fearless in the certainty of his faith, stretched forth
a withered arm and laid a bony finger on purpose.
For purpose, the touch of the monk's finger opened facet after facet after
facet, in an explosive growth of crystalline knowledge which, had purpose
truly been a self-illuminated jewel, would have blinded the man who touched
it.
No sooner had Michael of Macedonia touched purpose than his body arched as if
in agony, his mouth gaped open in a soundless scream, and his face bore the