"David Drake - General 04 - The Steel" - читать интересную книгу автора (Drake David)

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The General
Volume 4: The Steel


by S.M. Stirling and David Drake




CHAPTER ONE


Thom Poplanich floated through infinity. The monobloc exploded outward, and he felt the
twisting of space-time in its birth-squall. . . .
I think I understand that now, he thought.
excellent, Center said, we will return to socio-historical analysis: subject, fall of the
federation of man.
He had been down here in the sanctum of Sector Command and Control Unit AZ12-b14-c000
Mk. XIV for years, now. His body was in stasis, his mind connected with the ancient battle computer on
levels far broader than the speechlike linkage of communication. It was no longer necessary for him to
see events sequentially. . . .
Images drifted through his consciousness. Earth. The True Earth of the Canonical Handbooks,
not this world of Bellevue. Yet it was not the perfect home of half-angels that the priests talked of, but a
world of men. Nations rose and warred with each other, empires grew and fell. Men learned as the
cycles swung upward, then forgot, and fur-clad savages dwelt in the ruins of cities, burning their books
for winter's warmth. At last one cycle swung further skyward than any before. On a small island
northwest of the main continent, engines were built. Ones he recognized at first, clanking steam-engines
driving factories to spin cloth, dragging loads across iron rails, powering ships. The machines grew
greater, stranger. They took to the air and cities burned beneath them. They spread from one land to the
next, springing at last into space.
Earth floated before him, blue and white like the images of Bellevue that Center showed him —
blue and white like all worlds that could nourish the seed of Earth. One final war scarred the globe
beneath him with flames, pinpoints of fire that consumed whole cities at a blow. Soundless globes of
magenta and orange bloomed in airless space.
the last jihad, Center's voice said. observe.
A vast construct drifted into view, skeletal and immense beside the tubular ships and dot-tiny
suited humans.
the tanaki spatial displacement net. the first model. Energies flowed across it, twisting into
dimensions describable only in mathematics that he had not yet mastered. The ships vanished, to
reappear far away . . . here, in Bellevue's system. The Colonists, first men to set foot on this world. They
landed and raised the green flag of Islam.
 even more than the jihad, the net made the federation of man essential, Center said. the
empire that rose this time expanded until it covered all the Earth, and leaped outward to nearby
stars. a century later, its representatives landed on distant Bellevue, much to the displeasure
of the descendants of the refugees, and the net was its downfall. expansion proceeded faster
than integration. Long strings of formulae followed. once the tipping point was reached, entropic
decay accelerated exponentially.