"Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Mitchell)

thoughtful machines, as well as endless wonderful intricate tales.... Almost all the books burned for
warmth as their peoples' world collapsed beneath weather, and they and their children froze."
Yours proved to be a genius clear and encompassing as flowing water. And now, of course, driven
by a ferocity that impressed even your late and quite ferocious father, that intelligence is causing our
ice-weighted world to tremble, so only Middle Kingdom, and of course New England, might stand
against you.
Do you remember the afternoon we read of Ancient-Alexander's life and conquests? We read it
together in a spectacular copybook, a treasure copied from an original found in the ruins of Los Angeles.
(— I trust, by the way, that the library at Caravanserai is being cared for. Over eight hundred
copybooks. No moisture. There must be no moisture — and copying and recopying continuous. The
books are all we have of Warm-times and civilization.) Do you remember how we yearned for an
encyclopedia, that dreamed-of miracle of answers? Never found, alas; too wonderful as kindling.
We read of Ancient-Alexander, and you diagramed his battles with squid ink on wide sheets of the
court's perfect paper. You refought those conflicts in your mind, your quill moving here and there... and
finally decided how the Persian center might have been more suitably arrayed.
"Clumsy forces," you said of the Persians and their Greek allies, but gathered them together on your
paper, set them in odd echelon... then waited for Ancient-Alexander and his Companions to make the
inevitable charge.
"He would have beaten me at the Granicus," you said, "but at Issus, I would have destroyed him.
There would have been no Gaugamela." And satisfied, you let the white sheets of paper, swarming with
the inked lines and arrows of battles never to be fought, slip from your lap to the grass.
I will not forget those afternoons, lord, nor your love of Warm-time poetry — particularly the New
England lady's. I could not stop for Death, so he kindly stopped for me... (How sad that those
Map-Boston people have fallen to growing beasts in women's bellies.)
Remembering our rich days, why then do I quit you? And for the service of an upstart
Captain-General of North Map-Mexico, Small-Sam Monroe, to whose camp you sent me as
ambassador and spy?
First, I leave your service for his because I loved his Second-mother, Catania Olsen, as a friend,
and because Small-Sam was born at Gardens, my home, when it was still tree green and full of families
and fine weaving, all under the rule of the last great Garden Lady, Mary Bongiorno. So, I choose my
future in honor of my past.
Second, I leave your service for his because while Small-Sam Monroe is a war-captain, and
successful at it, I think he will not be only a war-captain, determined as you are to devour all our
cold-struck continent, and so cause a barbarous age to become even more so.
You will be interested to hear that when I mentioned my intention to Monroe — to leave your
service for his — he insisted I first complete the task for which you sent me, and forward to you a
complete history, description, and report of the current essential military and economic matters of his
overlordship. This report to be carried sealed and unread by him or any man of his, and delivered along
with his personal apology for depriving you of an amusing servant.... I'm not sure why 'amusing.'
He also refused to accept any report I might have made to him concerning you or the Khanate.
I believe you would like Sam Monroe — the 'Small-Sam,' I understand, has gone out of usage
since his victories. He is a very interesting young man — your age, as it happens, within a year or two.
He possesses a sort of informed, stony common sense, an interesting contrast to your brilliance.
I will miss you, my lord. You were an incomparable student… though I have felt more and more that
I failed you as a teacher, to have left you with nothing but the determination to enforce your will across
our world.
Once your servant, but no longer such...
Neckless Peter Wilson
 KINGDOM RIVER
CHAPTER 1