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carryingour ideas to the stars. And space is infinite, Feck. We can have our
cake and eat it too. Live foreverand continue to breed. All the cake in the
universe is ours for the taking.
The king s eyes had gone out of focus, as if he were looking not at the holie
window and the bridge ofNewhope, but at this glorious future off in the
distance somewhere.
Just ignore him, Xmary told her crew. We ve got work to do. Battle plans
to draw up.Fist may be a match for mining colonies and pirate sloops, but
we ve got a hundred times her reactor power and probably five hundred times
her programmable mass. We can throw a lot of energy in a lot of different
ways. If they want to stand in our path, that s their prerogative, but it
doesn t mean they can stop us.
I m standing right here, Bascal said. I can hear every word.
Just ignore him, Xmary repeated.
Although he grew increasingly angry, Bascal had too much dignity to press
this point. If they weren t going to talk to him, then neither was he going to
talk to them. He watched for a while as normal bridge chatter resumed: the
scanning and neutralizing of debris, the shifting of ballast mass to minimize
the pressure on station-keeping thrusters.
If you make it through, it s going to be a long trip, he injected at one
point. No fax storage. I did a shorter version on the way out here, and
believe me it was loooong. Are you people sure you can handle it?
But nobody responded to that, and a king really did have better things to do
than sit there all day staring quietly at his enemies. After ten more minutes
of quiet standoff, his image got bored and winked out.
Alone at last, Eustace said.
But Conrad shook his head. Don t count on it. He ll have sensors in the
walls by now. Our king is quite a talented programmer.
Damn right he is, said a disembodied voice. Bascal s.
It was hardly a timely quip, though; his signal could only travel at the
speed of light, whereas the distance betweenNewhope and Planet Two (Sorrow,
Conrad reminded himself. Would that name ever stick?) was increasing rapidly.
With the ship already doing better than thirty kps one ten-thousandth of the
speed of light every seventy minutes of travel added a full second to the
round-trip signal lag.
This complicates our battle planning, Conrad noted. We have no security at
all. We have to assume that everything we do and say is being analyzed, at
least until we get the sun between ourselves and the planet. Possibly even
then. And any weapons we produce from the wellstone of the hull will be
difficult to trust.
It does make things interesting, Xmary agreed.
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ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The next time Bascal appeared in a visible form, the shipwas nine
light-seconds from Sorrow, meaning the round-trip signal lag was eighteen
seconds. He didn t even bother trying to hold a conversation like that, but
simply haloed himself and fired off an interactive message. A large and
complicated one, judging by the hours its upload spent chokingNewhope s comm
systems.
It doesn t have to be like this, the king said, appearing translucently as
a crouching figure, leaning right into Conrad s face as he lay on his bunk
trying to catch a few hours of sleep. I still want you on my team. Whatever
has driven you to this desperate act, I need to know about it. That s advice
you should be givingto me . I should be accounting for it in my planning.
I tried, Conrad told him tiredly. You re not an easy man to advise. You
respond much better to actions, as you ve amply demonstrated today.
So fine, I m responding. Now talk to me.
Conrad sighed. Bas, why do your plans always involve this pressure cooker of
pain and death and suffering? Why are the rewards always so far in the future?
People don t want that. They never have and never will.
But we re immorbid, Bascal answered. Some of us. Planning for the future
never used to be a personal thing. Our parents were the first crop of humans
to map out a future they themselves would inhabit. And they pissed the job,
didn t they? We ve got to do better. Forget twenty-year plans and even century
plans; we have the opportunity, theduty , to plan across the millennia, across
the eons. And if we can see paradise, not just in dreams but in the hard, cold
numbers of mathematical certainty, does it not behoove us to be brave? To take
the first hard steps down that road? The easier roads all lead to ruin, my
friend. I veseen it.
Conrad sighed. Jesus and the little gods, Bas, quit the act. You can
bamboozle children, but you re not foolingme . By the time you solve the
economic crisis, the colony s dead will be irradiated into frozen goo. There s
no resurrection; the only place you can send them is heaven itself. But
there s a lesser paradise much closer at hand.
The king s eyes filled with cold certainty. You ve taken the Cryoleum.
Twenty-five thousand sleeping bodies. Taking them home to a place they ve
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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