"Walter Jon Williams - Dread Empire's Fall 01 - The Praxis" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

FIFTEEN

Sula fought her way out of unconsciousness with an urgent…

SIXTEEN

Five hours after transiting Magaria Wormhole 1, Sula’s pinnace was…

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 Williams, Walter Jon - [Dead Empire's Fall 01] - The Praxis




A Note on the Calendar

The Shaa “year” is, so far as anyone knows, an…




PROLOGUE

The Shaa was the last of its kind. It lay on a couch in the Great Refuge, the huge domed building carved
out of the great granite plateau of the High City, the massive edifice from which the Shaa had once set
forth to conquer their empire, from which their councils had ruled the destiny of billions, and—now—to
which they came to die.

The Shaa was named Anticipation of Victory—it had been born in the early days of the Praxis, when
the Shaa had commenced to plan conquests but had not yet begun them, and in the course of its long life,
it had personally witnessed the glories and triumphs that followed. Other races had fallen, one by one,
beneath the Shaa yoke, and on these the Shaa and its peers had imposed the uniformity of their rule.

Anticipation of Victory itself had not left the Great Refuge in centuries. It was surrounded at all times
by attendants and officials, members of subject races who brought reports and requests, who transmitted
its orders to the farthest reaches of its dominions. Servants washed and dressed the Shaa, maintained the
vast computer network to which its nerves had been connected, and brought choice foods to cater to its
diminished appetite. Though it was never alone, not for an instant, nevertheless the Shaa was tormented
by the bitter pangs of loneliness.

There was no one left to understand. No one with whom to share its memories of glory.

Memories of those early days were undiminished. The Shaa remembered with brilliant clarity the fever
that burned among its peers, the urge to bend all others, to bend the universe itself, to the perfect truth of
the Praxis. It remembered the splendor of the early victories, how the primitive Naxids had been turned
to the service of the Shaa, how others had then fallen—the Terrans, the Torminel, the Lai-owns, and
others.

Yet with each conquest had come diminished expectation, a slight reduction of the fever that burned in
the Shaa. Each race first had to be raised to the knowledge of their duty, cultivated with exquisite care