Читать онлайн «Jupiter War»

Автор Нил Эшер

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To those private companies that are making the plans and actually developing the technology to mine asteroids, build orbital hotels and build bases on the Moon and Mars. Ignore your detractors and keep looking at the stars.

Contents

Epilogue

The Good Will of the People

It can been seen that, despite her brutal treatment of anyone who ever stood in her way, Serene Galahad’s reign was still contingent on the good will of the people of Earth. However, the knowledge of the ‘common man’ was limited; he thought that Alan Saul had attacked Earth and released the Scour – the pandemic that annihilated nearly half of Earth’s population of eighteen billion – almost certainly killing someone the common man knew.

Under Serene Galahad that same common man seemed to have acquired more personal freedom and more material wealth, while his ruler apparently strove to avenge his losses. Of course, he did not know that the greater freedom he enjoyed was due to Saul wiping out Committee infrastructure and frying a large proportion of those who had formerly wielded the whip. Nor did he understand that his greater material wealth was precisely because the Scour had killed billions of his fellows. Nor did he realize that Serene Galahad was entirely responsible for the Scour. The gratitude he felt for his current ruler was unwarranted, and the sense of motivation that had him turning up at the factory gates early was based on a lie. This sort of ignorance, unfortunately, has been the lot of the common man since the dawn of time.

Earth

The sun was shining on what had been Chairman Messina’s small patch of Tuscan countryside. There were lemons on some of the trees and green oranges on others, while below them carefully tended succulents had opened red, orange, white and yellow flowers to the morning sun. Light glinted brightly off an all-chrome shepherd as it strode on patrol near the fence, and razorbirds roosting on a watchtower could almost be mistaken for seagulls. But all this brightness seemed just a veneer over blackness to Serene Galahad.