"Daniel Keys Moran - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

really let myself love."
 Interlude:
from There to Here
2049-2676 Inclusive

When the rescue ships arrived at Ganymede, weeks too late, there was nothing left of the beachhead,
and little enough left of the former surface of Ganymede itself on the hemisphere where the fragments of
Europa had struck. The Zaradin ship was gone; and the Peaceforcers and scientists who swarmed in
their dozens over the wreckage of the first Ganymean settlement found nothing that would lead them to
guess that such beings had ever existed.
The Cathedral left through Sol's First Gate; and six hundred and twenty-seven years passed.
It is not a large span of time, in the scheme of things. Only on the human scale does it become
significant...a matter of generations, even for humans who live far longer than those of the twenty-first
century Gregorian: more time separates Tyrel November from 2049 than separates 2049 from
Christopher Columbus' first voyage to the New World.
The roll call of the Players, down through the centuries, is immense. The universe is too complex to be
told of in any story, or any collection of stories, or in all stories. Everything is a summary and a lie.
Perhaps I should tell you of the art of Tyrel November's time, or the technology, or the genetics or the
politics; perhaps I should explain the path of the Exodus, map the routes humanity has taken through the
spacelace tunnels, its small tentative footholds among the stars: a few thousands of planets settled, in a
galaxy where the stars number a third of a trillion, in a universe where the Milky Way is one galaxy
among hundreds of billions, when the Continuing Time itself is only one timeline among the half quadrillion
that compose the Great Wheel of Existence.
We are small beyond understanding; but in the heritage of our people, in the naming of the Players
whose dreams and memories live on within us, are the seeds of the only meaning we will ever find.
Across the span of the years, some things stand out:
It has been six hundred and twenty-seven years since the destruction of the Ganymede colony; six
hundred and fourteen years since the black day in 2062 when the United Nations Peace Keeping Force,
under the command of a man named Mohammed Vance, destroyed all but two of the Castanaveras
telepaths. It has been five hundred and ninety-six years since Trent the Uncatchable died, and rose again,
and vanished, perhaps forever; and five hundred and seventy-seven years since the Dauntless, the first
tachyon starship in all of history, made its only voyage from Sol System.
It has been five hundred and forty-six years since the beginning of the War with the Sleem, the great
conflict in which humanity was nearly exterminated; it has been five hundred and thirty years since the
sleem empire was broken at the Battle of the Core, by an alliance of human and K'Ailla forces; and five
hundred and twenty-seven years since Daniel November dropped the city of Starfall onto the surface of
the planet November.
It has been four hundred and ninety-six years since the Platform Rose from Earth left Sol System
with the Spollant Caravan, and began the Exodus from Earth. Trentists--members of the Church of His
Return, more commonly called the Exodus Church- -followed them out among the stars not long after.
It has been four hundred and eighty-four years since Lorn November published The Protocols of
Anarchy; four hundred and eighty-one years since Lorn's brother, Richard, declared himself the first
Lord of the House of November, and the House of November the planet's governing body. On
November today there are courts and judges and taxes. And Anarchists. Lots of them.
It has been two hundred and eighty-seven years since the death of Kinderjim of November. The
world he helped settle, Domain, is today, by virtue of Kinderjim's death, the only world in the explored
Continuing Time where humans and K'Aillae live together in peace.
It has been one hundred and seventy-five years since Ola Blue died. She is more famous now than
when alive, and she was well known then: Our Lady of Nightways, the deadliest human being who ever
lived, or is ever likely to. It is said of Ola Blue that she was death itself, and sorrow: Ola Blue herself said