"S. M. Stirling - Draka 04 - Drakon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

the energy budget's enough to notice, even these days."

And really large energies were difficult to handle on a planetary surface; that was probably why
the project had been put in sparsely populated North America, just in case. With the Atlantic Ocean to act
as an emergency heat sink.

"Glory."

"Service," Gwen replied in farewell. "I'll have a report for you as soon as I can."

She held the coffee cup out for a refill and frowned as the link disappeared. Tamirindus was
worried, which meant the Technical Directorate was worried. Which means I should be worried.
Something of a novelty; this last century or so had been very peaceful.

"Manual," she said, tossing the cup into the cycler. To her transducer: news.

The aircraft swooped and dove as her hand settled on the joystick it extruded. Mountains gave way
to high rolling plains, green with new grass. Life swarmed, wild horses, antelope, once a herd of bison a
million strong. On the shores of a lake a pack of centaurs surrounded a mammoth, shooting with thick
recurved bows, galloping in to stab with long heavy lances. Bogged in the lakeside mud, the giant reddish
bulk raised its trunk and trumpeted in agony. The females and colts waited at a distance, setting up dome
tents and preparing to butcher the great curltusker. None of the stallions looked up from their task, but the
others pointed in wonder at the low-flying aircraft, the young running in circles and kicking their hind feet up
in sheer glee.

Meanwhile information flowed in; there were a hundred million of her people in the Solar System,
and ten times that number of servus, enough to generate considerable news. Gossip, politics, tournaments,
duels, wingflying in the domed craters of the Moon, a redirected comet streaking through the nearly clear
atmosphere of Venus as the long trouble-plagued terraforming came to an end, sailboats drifting down the
ocean that filled the Valles Marineris on Mars. The Cygnus Nine probe had reported in, and there was not
only a habitable planet, but an intelligent species on it.

That made her flip the aircraft up, let it do the piloting and take notice; that was only the second
race of sophonts found so far, in scores of systems. Planets were the general rule around Sol-type stars, life
more common than not, biochemistries roughly compatible with Earth's rare but not impossibly so. Sapient,
language-using, tool-making species were very uncommon. The previous discovery hadn't been made until
after the colonizing expedition landed, the natives being the equivalent of Homo erectus, very scarce and
not having made much impact on their planet. This new bunch were extremely interesting. Weird-looking,
two big eyes and two little ones near a perforated beaklike projection in the middle of their . . . well,
probably faces. A Bronze Age-equivalent technology, so they wouldn't be any trouble for the colonizing
expedition. A few thunderbolts and the Gods from the Sky would be worshiped with fervor.

Of course, the natives would be wild. It would probably take a while to understand the biology and
produce a proper domesticated strain, but even so it would be useful to have a population in place rather
than breeding from frozen ova alone.

Below, grassland dwindled. Forests appeared along rivers and grew thicker. Fields drew their
swirling lines across the landscape, each clustered around a manor house and its dependencies, the estates
separated by kilometers of wilderness. Settlement faded again east of the Mississippi, until the
Appalachians reared blue and silent, covered with ancient woods of hickory and oak. A thread of smoke