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

sleem. InSystem, and particularly on Earth, this is not true. The sleem never hit Earth itself. Nearly six
hundred years later, Terrans referring to "the war" usually mean the AI War, and the Revolution that
followed it: humans and the creations of humans caused the vast Glass Deserts.)
 Shiva Enherod, sitting in a beach chair next to Tyrel's, said, "Who hates you?"
Tyrel shrugged. "Wouldn't know."
Shiva Enherod nodded. Tyrel suspected the older man liked him- -he had sought out Tyrel's company
more than once during Tyrel's six years at College--but it was hard to tell with night faces. And Shiva
Enherod was not just a night face; he was one of six living Shivas, of fourteen in the history of United
Earth Intelligence. After a moment Enherod said politely, "Home politics?"
Tyrel felt no inclination to dignify the comment with an answer.
Enherod nodded as though Tyrel had. Despite his suspicion of and distaste for it, at times Tyrel
appreciated the Source; unlike humans, it never belabored the obvious--
--Enherod said, "Whoever it was is still out there, Tyrel."

Into a place where nothing lived, and nothing stirred, and shadows dreamed of death, came a man.

Two thousand light years away from Earth and Tyrel November and the Face of Night...
...sixteen hundred light years away from November, at the other end of the twisting long tunnels that
linked November to Eloise, and Eloise to Devnet...
...a human being named Bodhisatva brought his starship, the Shivering Bastard, out of Devnet
System's First Gate. The Shivering Bastard entered real space moving at better than ninety-eight
percent of light, the same speed at which she had entered the spacelace tunnel, back at the Eloisean
planetary system.
Bodhi had missed the Gate at Eloise, his first four tries at entry. At .98C the insertion beam had to
sync the Gate perfectly on the first try. If he missed, the Shivering Bastard would be a hundred
thousand kilometers past the Gate by the time the insertion beam could be resynchronized.
It did not seem to Bodhi that he was taking excessively long; time shrank as he approached
lightspeed, and in his time only about ten hours passed as he accelerated to make his pass at the Gate,
and another ten as he missed and decelerated to zero. But he knew it was not so; in the Continuing Time
at large days passed with each approach, and with each deceleration.
There was a deadline to his attempts; one of the House of November's precious few tachyon
starships, the Reeny Ihr, was en route to Devnet, and was due to arrive there in sixty-eight days.
It was not until Bodhi's fifth pass, twenty-seven days after beginning, that Eloise's Third Gate,
entryway to the long tunnel to Devnet, opened at Bodhisatva's approach, and swallowed the Shivering
Bastard.

When Devnet fell silent; when ship after ship of the November Guard failed to return after entering the
long tunnel to Devnet; and when the famous, formidable Wizard refused for reasons of her own to try
and find out what had gone wrong; then P'Rythan, recently Lord of the House of November, was forced
to a choice she despised.
In truth she had no options. Though the universe is a dangerous place, the House of November is not
prone to overreacting; but the Luciferean System, which contains November, is tunneled to Eloise, and
Eloise is tunneled to Devnet; and danger only two Gates away was danger the House of November
could not tolerate.
Had she been younger, or held a different post, P'Rythan might have gone herself; she was a woman
of considerable talents. But she was also Lord of the House of November; and so, for only the sixth time
since 2294, when it assumed control of the planet whose name it shared, the House of November sought
outside aide. P'Rythan November sent an envoy to Sol, to Earth, to America, to California, to the city of
Van Nuys, to the headquarters of a certain ancient organization; and there a Captain of the November
Guard presented P'Rythan's request for the aid of Pinkerton Agent Bodhisatva.