[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
engineers tried to steer ships around each other, the sheer flexibility of
worm tunnels spelled doom. Each worm mouth kept the other "informed"
of what it had just eaten. This information flowed as a wave, not in physical
matter, but in the tension of the wormhole itself a ripple in the "stress
tensor, " as physicists termed it.
Flying ships through both mouths sent stress waves propagating toward each
other, at speeds which depended on the location and velocity of the ships. The
stress constricted the throat, so that when the waves met, a clenching
squeezed down the walls.
The essential point was that the two waves moved differently after they met.
They interacted, one slowing and the other speeding up, in a highly nonlinear
fashion.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Page 213
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
One wave could grow, the other shrink. The big one made the throat clench down
into sausage links.
When a sausage neck met a ship, the craft might slip through but calculating
that was a prodigious job.
If the sausage neck happened to meet the two ships when they passed crunch.
This was no mere technical problem. It was a real limitation, imposed by the
laws of quantum gravity.
From that firm fact arose an elaborate system of safeguards, taxes,
regulators, and hangers-on all the apparatus of a bureaucracy which does
indeed have a purpose and makes the most of it.
Hari learned to dispel his apprehension by watching the views. Suns and
planets of great, luminous beauty floated in the blackness.
Behind the resplendence, he knew, lurked necessity.
From the wormhole calculus arose blunt economic facts. Between worlds A and B
there might be half a dozen wormhole jumps; the Nest was not simply connected,
a mere astrophysical subway system. Each worm mouth imposed added fees and
charges on each shipment.
Control of an entire trade route yielded the maxi-
mum profit. The struggle for control was unending, often violent. From the
viewpoint of economics, politics, and "historical momentum" which meant a sort
of imposed inertia on events a local empire which controlled a whole
constellation of nodes should be solid, enduring.
Not so. Time and again, regional satrapies went toes-up.
Many perished because they were elaborately controlled. It seemed natural to
squeeze every worm passage for the maximum fee, by coordinating every worm
mouth to optimize traffic. But that degree of control made people restive.
The system could not deliver the best benefits. Overcontrol failed.
On their seventeenth jump, they met a case in Doint.
6.
"Vector aside for search, " came an automatic command from an Imperial vessel.
They had no choice. The big-bellied Imperial scooped them up within seconds
after their emergence from a medium-sized wormhole mouth.
"Transgression tax, " a computerized system announced. "Planet Obejeeon
demands that special carriers pay " A blur of computer language followed.
"Let's pay it, " Hari said.
"I wonder if it will provide a tracer for Lamurk?" Dors said over the internal
comm.
"What is our option?"
"I shall use my own personal indices. "
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"For a wormhole transit? That will bankrupt you!"
"It is safer. "
Hari fumed while they floated in magnetic grap-plers beneath the Imperial
picket ship. The worm-hole orbited a heavily industrialized world. Gray cities
sprawled over the continents and webbed across the seas in huge hexagonals.
The Empire had two planetary modes: rural and urban. Helicon was a farm world,
socially stable because of its time-honored lineages and stable economic
modes. Such worlds, and the similar
Femo-rustics, lasted.
Obejeeon, on the other hand, seemed to cater to the other basic human impulse:
clumping, seeking the rub of one's fellows. Trantor was the pinnacle of city
clustering.
Hari had always thought it odd that humanity broke so easily into two modes.
Now, though, his pan experience clarified these proclivities.
Pan love of the open and natural had its parallel in the rustic worlds. This
included a host of possible societies, especially the Femo-pastoral attractor
Page 214
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
in psychohistory-space.
Its opposite pole claustrophobic, though reassuring societies emerged from the
same psychody-namic roots as the pans' tribal gathering. Pans' obsessive
grooming expressed itself in humans as gossip and partying. Pan hierarchies
gave the basic shape to the various Feudalist attractor groups:
Macho, Socialist, Paternal. Even the odd thantocra-cies, of some of the Fallen
Worlds, fit the pattern.
They had Pharaoh-figures promising admission to an afterlife and detailed
rankings descending from his exalted peak in the rigid social pyramid.
These categories he now felt in his gut. That was the element he had been
missing. Now he could include nuances and shadings in the psychohistorical
equations which reflected earned experience. Thatw ould be much better than
the dry abstractions which had led him so far.
"They're paid off, " Dors sent over the comm. "Such corruption!"
"Ummm, yes, shocking. " Was he getting cynical? He wanted to turn and speak
with her, but their pencil ship allowed scant socializing.
"Let's go. "
"Where to?"
"To... " He realized that he had no idea.
"We have probably eluded pursuit. " Dors' voicecame through stiff and tight.
He had learned to recognize signs of her own tension.
"I'd like to see Helicon again. "
"They would expect that. "
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
He felt a stab of disappointment. Until now he had not realized how close to
his heart his early years still
*ere. Had Trantor dulled him to his own emotions?
-\\Tiere, then?"
"I took advantage of this pause to alert a friend, by ^ormlink, " she said.
"We may be able to return to
Trantor, though through a devious route. "
"Trantor! Lamurk "
"May not expect such audacity. "
"Which recommends the idea. "
7.
It was dizzying leaping about the entire galaxy trapped in a casket-sized
container. They jumped and dodged and jumped again. At several more wormhole
yards Dors made "deals. " Payoffs, actually. She deftly dealt combinations of
his cygnets, the Imperial Passage indices, and her private numbers.
"Costly, " Hari fretted. "How will I ever pay "
"The dead do not worry about debts, " she said.
"You have such an engaging way of putting matters. "
"Subtlety is wasted here. "
They emerged from one jump in close orbit about a sublimely tortured star.
Streamers lush with light raced by them.
"How long can this worm last here?" he wondered. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl chiara76.opx.pl
engineers tried to steer ships around each other, the sheer flexibility of
worm tunnels spelled doom. Each worm mouth kept the other "informed"
of what it had just eaten. This information flowed as a wave, not in physical
matter, but in the tension of the wormhole itself a ripple in the "stress
tensor, " as physicists termed it.
Flying ships through both mouths sent stress waves propagating toward each
other, at speeds which depended on the location and velocity of the ships. The
stress constricted the throat, so that when the waves met, a clenching
squeezed down the walls.
The essential point was that the two waves moved differently after they met.
They interacted, one slowing and the other speeding up, in a highly nonlinear
fashion.
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
Page 213
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
One wave could grow, the other shrink. The big one made the throat clench down
into sausage links.
When a sausage neck met a ship, the craft might slip through but calculating
that was a prodigious job.
If the sausage neck happened to meet the two ships when they passed crunch.
This was no mere technical problem. It was a real limitation, imposed by the
laws of quantum gravity.
From that firm fact arose an elaborate system of safeguards, taxes,
regulators, and hangers-on all the apparatus of a bureaucracy which does
indeed have a purpose and makes the most of it.
Hari learned to dispel his apprehension by watching the views. Suns and
planets of great, luminous beauty floated in the blackness.
Behind the resplendence, he knew, lurked necessity.
From the wormhole calculus arose blunt economic facts. Between worlds A and B
there might be half a dozen wormhole jumps; the Nest was not simply connected,
a mere astrophysical subway system. Each worm mouth imposed added fees and
charges on each shipment.
Control of an entire trade route yielded the maxi-
mum profit. The struggle for control was unending, often violent. From the
viewpoint of economics, politics, and "historical momentum" which meant a sort
of imposed inertia on events a local empire which controlled a whole
constellation of nodes should be solid, enduring.
Not so. Time and again, regional satrapies went toes-up.
Many perished because they were elaborately controlled. It seemed natural to
squeeze every worm passage for the maximum fee, by coordinating every worm
mouth to optimize traffic. But that degree of control made people restive.
The system could not deliver the best benefits. Overcontrol failed.
On their seventeenth jump, they met a case in Doint.
6.
"Vector aside for search, " came an automatic command from an Imperial vessel.
They had no choice. The big-bellied Imperial scooped them up within seconds
after their emergence from a medium-sized wormhole mouth.
"Transgression tax, " a computerized system announced. "Planet Obejeeon
demands that special carriers pay " A blur of computer language followed.
"Let's pay it, " Hari said.
"I wonder if it will provide a tracer for Lamurk?" Dors said over the internal
comm.
"What is our option?"
"I shall use my own personal indices. "
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
"For a wormhole transit? That will bankrupt you!"
"It is safer. "
Hari fumed while they floated in magnetic grap-plers beneath the Imperial
picket ship. The worm-hole orbited a heavily industrialized world. Gray cities
sprawled over the continents and webbed across the seas in huge hexagonals.
The Empire had two planetary modes: rural and urban. Helicon was a farm world,
socially stable because of its time-honored lineages and stable economic
modes. Such worlds, and the similar
Femo-rustics, lasted.
Obejeeon, on the other hand, seemed to cater to the other basic human impulse:
clumping, seeking the rub of one's fellows. Trantor was the pinnacle of city
clustering.
Hari had always thought it odd that humanity broke so easily into two modes.
Now, though, his pan experience clarified these proclivities.
Pan love of the open and natural had its parallel in the rustic worlds. This
included a host of possible societies, especially the Femo-pastoral attractor
Page 214
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
in psychohistory-space.
Its opposite pole claustrophobic, though reassuring societies emerged from the
same psychody-namic roots as the pans' tribal gathering. Pans' obsessive
grooming expressed itself in humans as gossip and partying. Pan hierarchies
gave the basic shape to the various Feudalist attractor groups:
Macho, Socialist, Paternal. Even the odd thantocra-cies, of some of the Fallen
Worlds, fit the pattern.
They had Pharaoh-figures promising admission to an afterlife and detailed
rankings descending from his exalted peak in the rigid social pyramid.
These categories he now felt in his gut. That was the element he had been
missing. Now he could include nuances and shadings in the psychohistorical
equations which reflected earned experience. Thatw ould be much better than
the dry abstractions which had led him so far.
"They're paid off, " Dors sent over the comm. "Such corruption!"
"Ummm, yes, shocking. " Was he getting cynical? He wanted to turn and speak
with her, but their pencil ship allowed scant socializing.
"Let's go. "
"Where to?"
"To... " He realized that he had no idea.
"We have probably eluded pursuit. " Dors' voicecame through stiff and tight.
He had learned to recognize signs of her own tension.
"I'd like to see Helicon again. "
"They would expect that. "
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html
He felt a stab of disappointment. Until now he had not realized how close to
his heart his early years still
*ere. Had Trantor dulled him to his own emotions?
-\\Tiere, then?"
"I took advantage of this pause to alert a friend, by ^ormlink, " she said.
"We may be able to return to
Trantor, though through a devious route. "
"Trantor! Lamurk "
"May not expect such audacity. "
"Which recommends the idea. "
7.
It was dizzying leaping about the entire galaxy trapped in a casket-sized
container. They jumped and dodged and jumped again. At several more wormhole
yards Dors made "deals. " Payoffs, actually. She deftly dealt combinations of
his cygnets, the Imperial Passage indices, and her private numbers.
"Costly, " Hari fretted. "How will I ever pay "
"The dead do not worry about debts, " she said.
"You have such an engaging way of putting matters. "
"Subtlety is wasted here. "
They emerged from one jump in close orbit about a sublimely tortured star.
Streamers lush with light raced by them.
"How long can this worm last here?" he wondered. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]