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

like trees raised from seedlings, trees whose limbs had to be tied and twisted and shaped so they would
achieve perfection and union with the Praxis. And, like trees, the servitor races had to be pruned, pruned
with bullets and whips and skinning knives, with the great annihilating fire of antimatter bombs, with the
slow wasting of radiation and the slower, inexorable decline of starvation. The labor had been immense,
the burden enormous, and the results uncertain.

file:///C|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry%20kruisw...0Dead%20Empire's%20Fall%2001%20-%20The%20Praxis.html (4 of 310)19-2-2006 4:01:15
 Williams, Walter Jon - [Dead Empire's Fall 01] - The Praxis



If only the Shaa had more time! If they had only had a few more thousand years in which to cultivate
their garden of perfection, Anticipation of Victory could die in the certainty that its glorious task would
be fulfilled.

But the Shaa hadn’t had the time they needed. The oldest succumbed first, their memories fading—not
the old memories, which remained clear, but the newer memories which, unable to displace the old,
failed to find a place in their minds.

The Shaa became unable to remember the flourishing of their own dream. They lost not the past, but the
present.

They sought artificial aids—massive computer memories that could be linked to their own nervous
systems and record their own lives in exquisite detail. But in time, accessing these memories grew
wearisome and, eventually, a painful burden no longer worth the effort.

So one by one the great constellation of the Shaa began to wink out. The Shaa did not fear to inflict
death, nor did they fear death themselves. Sad in the knowledge that they had become a burden on their
own dream, they chose their own deaths, and when they died, they died with ceremony.

And now Anticipation of Victory lay on its couch, among the great machines through which it searched
for his memories, and it knew that soon the time would come to lay down its responsibilities.

It had done its best to guide the younger races along the proper paths. In its time, it had awarded both
great riches and terrible punishments. It had created a system by which the Praxis could be maintained
after its death and hold the empire stable.

Its greatest hope was that after its death nothing would change.

Nothing at all. Or ever.




ONE

“Of course, following the Great Master’s death, I will kill myself.”

Lieutenant Gareth Martinez, keeping pace alongside the longer-legged Fleet Commander Enderby, felt
himself stumble as he heard the words.