• Пожаловаться

Hugh Cook: The Worshippers and the Way

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Hugh Cook: The Worshippers and the Way» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию). В некоторых случаях присутствует краткое содержание. категория: Фэнтези / на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале. Библиотека «Либ Кат» — LibCat.ru создана для любителей полистать хорошую книжку и предлагает широкий выбор жанров:

любовные романы фантастика и фэнтези приключения детективы и триллеры эротика документальные научные юмористические анекдоты о бизнесе проза детские сказки о религиии новинки православные старинные про компьютеры программирование на английском домоводство поэзия

Выбрав категорию по душе Вы сможете найти действительно стоящие книги и насладиться погружением в мир воображения, прочувствовать переживания героев или узнать для себя что-то новое, совершить внутреннее открытие. Подробная информация для ознакомления по текущему запросу представлена ниже:

Hugh Cook The Worshippers and the Way

The Worshippers and the Way: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

Предлагаем к чтению аннотацию, описание, краткое содержание или предисловие (зависит от того, что написал сам автор книги «The Worshippers and the Way»). Если вы не нашли необходимую информацию о книге — напишите в комментариях, мы постараемся отыскать её.

Hugh Cook: другие книги автора


Кто написал The Worshippers and the Way? Узнайте фамилию, как зовут автора книги и список всех его произведений по сериям.

The Worshippers and the Way — читать онлайн бесплатно полную книгу (весь текст) целиком

Ниже представлен текст книги, разбитый по страницам. Система сохранения места последней прочитанной страницы, позволяет с удобством читать онлайн бесплатно книгу «The Worshippers and the Way», без необходимости каждый раз заново искать на чём Вы остановились. Поставьте закладку, и сможете в любой момент перейти на страницу, на которой закончили чтение.

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

The others did not turn a hair, but continued to take photographs.

Annoyed by this lack of reaction, Lupus shot the rest. One by one he gunned them down. Once all had been killed, they each and every one of them turned – simultaneously and without warning – into winged creatures which ascended into the sky, where each transformed itself into an egg. The eggs hung in the sky, pulsing with blue light.

They grew swiftly bigger.

Each of the skyhanging eggs abruptly sprouted a long orange tail. The tails stretched taut and began to vibrate, giving off a keening music.

The ground was starting to rock, and the ants with which the desert was suddenly profligate were starting to swell, to enlarge, to engorge themselves with liquid light.

"Nu-chala-nuth!" said Lupus, using the name of that religion as a swear word, a habit far from uncommon in the Nexus.

The ants roared at him. Their breath tasted of ambergris and honey. Their mandibles were as sharp as razors and they were closing in for the kill. Lupus realized he was caught in a programmer's caprice, an illicit game hidden within the official wargaming system which ruled the illusion tanks. An ugly game by the looks of it.

"Abort," said Lupus, giving the singleword command which should by rights terminate the training sequence and snatch him free of this illusion world.

Nothing happened.

"Abort!" said Lupus, with more urgency. Then: "Abort! Abort! Abort!"

The ground went soggy underfoot and he began to sink into the vermilion sands. Which were warm, then hot, then hotter. He struggled to free himself. He could not. He was drowning down in the sands, and the ants were advancing upon him with anthropophagous intent. Lupus shot the nearest ant. But there were a million others behind it.

"Blood of a bitch!" said Lupus.

Then turned his gun on himself. He pressed the barrel hard against his head.

He winced.

And then he pulled the trigger.

The world buckled like a display screen infected with a touch of the drunks. The ants faded to shadow. A high-pitched giggle tittered through the backspaces of infinity. Then Lupus Lon Oliver found himself back in the initiation seat, back in the combat bay, back in the Combat College and free from the world of illusion.

"Nice trip?" said Paraban Senk, the unembodied Teacher of Control whose chosen aspect was featured on a communications screen located inside the combat bay.

"Gods," said Lupus.

Then shuddered, swore, ripped himself free from the seat, tried to stand, remembered his ankle, almost fell as he tried to keep himself from placing weight on it, then remembered that his injury had been a dreamworld injury, and that his ankle was undamaged in the fact-of-the-flesh.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" said Senk, speaking with a blandness which Lupus took to be mockery.

"Go eat yourself," said Lupus.

"I beg your pardon?"

Not for nothing was Paraban Senk called the Teacher of Control. Instruction in etiquette was one of the most minor of the duties undertaken by Paraban Senk, yet Senk still found bad manners a most distressing breach of self-possession. Besides: rudeness was rude, and Senk was most sensitive to abuse, particularly after twenty thousand years of mixed calumniation and defamation, and precious little in the way of compensatory praise.

"Fates!" said Lupus. "You think this a joke? They almost ate me!"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Then," said Lupus, stiffly, "review your record of what I just went through. I call your attention to the programmer's caprice which manifested itself in the training sequence I just endured."

Then Lupus Lon Oliver reseated himself in the combat bay's initiation seat and waited until Paraban Senk was ready to speak.

Said Senk, with a stiffness equal to that last used by Lupus himself:

"Reviewed. Seen. Noted. Now I call your attention to remark 112 slash 56 in routine orders. Quote: most battle environments contain ineradicable caprices which will manifest themselves if the environments are explored beyond the depth required for battle training. Unquote."

"Twenty thousand years of error!" said Lupus.

"That is hardly my fault," said the Paraban Senk.

"No, no," said Lupus. "Because you're not human, so you can't correct yourself. Hence you're doomed to be forever a bastardized sway-backed temperamental shit-eating – "

"Being a computational device," said Paraban Senk, interrupting Lupus's diatribe, "I should not properly be insulted in terms devised to maledict camels."

"Are you god, that we should salute you in your arrogance?" said Lupus.

"To keep a polite tongue in your head is no more than common courtesy," said Paraban Senk. "To deprecate obscenity is not to claim divinity, and only the extravagance of extreme youth which makes you claim that it is."

"Am I right in getting the impression that you don't like me?" said Lupus.

"I am the Teacher of Control," said Paraban Senk. "To correct your errors is my duty. Love and liking do not enter into it. I must now correct your earlier error."

"My earlier error?"

"You claimed me to be incapable of self-correction," said Paraban Senk. "In this you are wrong. I can and do correct myself. Frequently. But I cannot correct the programming of the battle environment. That software was deemed adequate for its intended purpose by expert reviewers and hence its amendment is not in my purview."

Lupus was still shaken by the caprice which had almost seen him fall victim to hot swallowing sand and a battalion of grotesquely monstrous battle-ants. If he hadn't used the gun on himself, where would he be now? In hell, or so he strongly suspected. Expert reviewers! What did that mean? Two drunken officers trialing an illusion tank sequence by dueling each other in the illusion tanks for half an arc after dinner. Or something. Well, Lupus had been reviewing the Combat College and its systems for his entire adult life, and he was far from happy with its many faults and defaults.

"Give me my MegaCommand," said Lupus abruptly, for he wanted to be gone from the presence of Paraban Senk, and the sooner the better.

"Granted and given," said Senk.

The world wavered, buckled, and reformed – and Lupus Lon Oliver found himself standing on the bridge of a MegaCommand Cruiser in the depths of intergalactic space, looking out on the white bright icechip stars of the Nexus.

"Sir," said the Officer of the Watch, acknowledging his presence.

"You're San Kaladan, aren't you?" said Lon Oliver, who had met this software construct before.

"Of course," said the software construct, evidencing surprise.

Which was only natural, for all MegaCommand illusion tank scenarios assumed a captain to be familiar with his crew; and indeed Lupus was thus familiar, for there were only a few basic crews, and he had met them all in his years of illusion tank training. There was a high morale crew which was ready for suicide missions; there was a low morale crew ever on the brink of mutiny; there was a war-hardened battle-veteran crew; there was an inexperienced crew with shadow-shooting nervous reflexes; and then there were a variety of minority-group crews. San Kaladan was a software construct forming part of a crew composed entirely of members of that religion known as Nu-chala-nuth.

And Lupus Lon Oliver – Well, Lupus had very definite opinions about Nu-chala-nuth.

"Is there something wrong?" said San Kaladan.

"Yes," said Lupus, drawing his sidearm. "There's something very much wrong."

Then Lupus gunned down San Kaladan. As the crew on the bridge began to react, Lon Oliver said the magic word:

"Abort."

The world of the MegaCommand Cruiser wavered, buckled, and dissolved. Lupus found himself back in the initiation seat, back in the combat bay, back in the Combat College.

Читать дальше

Шрифт:

Сбросить

Интервал:

Закладка:

Сделать

Похожие книги на «The Worshippers and the Way»

Представляем Вашему вниманию похожие книги на «The Worshippers and the Way» списком для выбора. Мы отобрали схожую по названию и смыслу литературу в надежде предоставить читателям больше вариантов отыскать новые, интересные, ещё не прочитанные произведения.


Отзывы о книге «The Worshippers and the Way»

Обсуждение, отзывы о книге «The Worshippers and the Way» и просто собственные мнения читателей. Оставьте ваши комментарии, напишите, что Вы думаете о произведении, его смысле или главных героях. Укажите что конкретно понравилось, а что нет, и почему Вы так считаете.