Cook, Glen - The Dragon Never Sleeps

VIP免费
2024-12-06 0 0 553.25KB 169 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
- I -
Guardship: VI! Gemina
On rest station in trojan L5 off R jaksonica 3
11/2.3 shipsyear 368!; year 43 of the Deified Kole
Marmigus
Dictate: The Deified Anseh! Ronygos, dct 12
WarAvocat Hanaver Strate, dct. I Alert status: Green Three
WarCrew sleeping [,03 duty section] Surveillance Mode: Passive
All was quiet in Hall of the Watchers. The whisper of electronics was soporific. Watchers
struggled to stay awake. Third WatchMaster roamed silently, tapping shoulders with an ivory baton.
His admonitions were not vigorous. WarAvocat had not yet left his quarters. He might not. He was
preoccupied with a new dalliance.
None of the Deified observed from their screens.
It had been this quiet for a shipsyear.
A ping! wakened everyone. Third WatchMaster tried to stroll toward the sound's source. His legs
betrayed him.
It was that kind of time. Any trivial break in routine caused quickened breathing.
The Deified Thalygos Mundt came onscreen, his expression malign as always. Third WatchMaster
asked, "What do we have, Break Detect?"
'Traveler breaking off the Web, WatchMaster."
Third WatchMaster looked to the head of the Hall. The appropriate displays were up. The routine
challenge had pulsed out. He glanced up. The Deified Thalygos Mundt had gone.
I1 • Glen Cook
What was it like, being a living part of the ship? It was a vagrant curiosity. He was young yet.
Only the old entertained ambitions toward immortality.
The backfeed from the breakaway appeared on the wall, downsped pulse content running from right to
left: Glorious Spent, House Cholot, bound from V. Rothica to D. Vawnii via P. Jaksonica: general
cargo and passengers. Cargo and passenger transhipments scheduled at P. Jaksonica 3B, data
follows.
Routine. A passenger list, in case one was wanted and stupid enough to travel without changing
identity.
"WatchMaster! I have an emergency signal!"
"Bring it up audial. Alert, Yellow Three." All over the Guardship green lights went yellow,
blinking.
The message: "... Gemina, we've had an unauthorized discharge of an emergency escape pod...."
Third WatchMaster snapped, "Alert, Yellow One! Page WarAvocat. Relay the incoming to appropriate
divisions."
"... not yet know if anyone was aboard...."
"Search. Find that pod."
"We have it, WatchMaster."
"Lock on. Track and Probe." Conscious of the screens overhead, he barked, "Get the data on the
wall. I want everything up when WarAvocat arrives."
Throughout VII Gemina the shift prepared for whatever demands might be placed on the Guardship.
"WatchMaster. We have Lock and Track. That pod is under control. Trajectory indicates a surface
destination near Cholot Varagona."
Was there another city on P. Jaksonica 3? "Probe data?"
"None yet, WatchMaster."
"Feed the target data to WarCentral. Pulse Canon Garrison Varagona. Prepare to intercept illegal
downbound."
Half the overhead screens were live now but the Deified remained silent. Still, he felt compelled
to demonstrate his grip. "Probe? How long is it going to take?"
"First approximation is due up, WatchMaster.... Here it comes. One biological lifeform. Artifact
or nonhuman."
Third WatchMaster hesitated. He did not want the disapprobation that would follow an order to
waken the whole
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • 3
Guardship. "Alert, Red Three." He slapped his baton into his palm, repeated it more forcefully.
Alarms snarled. Decks and bulkheads shivered. The air whispered and murmured and became cooler as
inertial sectors locking-in distressed peacetime flow patterns. Already dim lighting faded as
power shunted to battle screen generators. Sound levels rose as normally silent Watchers ran
verbal checks with their neighbors.
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (1 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
Then came a bone-vibrating grumble as starspace drives went on line and Web tractor wells lit off.
Third WatchMaster sighed, ran a hand through brown hair, adjusted his khaki OpsCrew uniform. He
had reached the limit of his authority.
The wall began running information from the Cholot Traveler's report of conditions on the Web. The
data proclaimed a routine passage.
WarAvocat Hanaver Strate, Dictat, immaculate in War-Crew black and silver, entered Hall of the
Watchers.
- 2 -
Lady Midnight drifted through the perpetual twilight of Merod Schene DownTown, tall, brittle as
leaf gold beaten translucent. Her lavender eyes darted from one nest of gloom to the next. Her
slim, pale, fragile face was dewed with sweat. Her thin white hands fluttered like panicky
hummingbirds. She started at a rustle from a shadow's heart, clutched her hands to her breast,
wrapped her shivering wings more tightly around her. The last hints of their usual silken glimmer
faded to shades of lead.
It was hot and damp and musty down there, decayed and slimy, dark and deadly, with sudden patches
of fetid air, like an old jungle battleground. Small things scuttled away.4 • Glen Cook
Midnight was afraid.
Fear was a new feeling. Fear was not part of her design. She had been made for the salons and
bedrooms of high society. Fear had had to be learned.
Lady Midnight savored new things. But this fear she did not like. It stole the color from her
wings. It gnawed her innards like cancer. It took away sleep and robbed her of appetite. It was an
assassin that butchered the rhythm of her dance-in-flight. It knotted her muscles till they ached.
"Fool," she murmured in an angel's voice. "You're Immune." She swished clothing of pastel panels
as thin as imagination. "You can't be touched." The fear did not subside.
Merod Schene DownTown reeked of insanity. The madness was spreading. Immunity could lose its value
any minute.
Scraping, clicking sounds came from the deeper darknesses. Things were following her. Crazy
things, evil things, the worst discards and mistakes, that till recently had confined their
predations to the deepest hours of the night. She felt their mad eyes measuring her.
They grew bolder all the time.
She paused outside the breezeway leading to her destination. The silence in there was more
intimidating than the clicks and slithers growing louder behind her. She did not want to go ahead.
But they were working themselves up back there.
Something moved in the breezeway.
Terror yanked a melodic whimper from Midnight's throat.
Dark dread rolled over her, filled her hollow bones with liquid nitrogen. Then warmth swamped her
as she recognized the shadow. "Amber Soul!"
The shadow shifted shape, becoming something out of nightmare, rushed past. Clicks, squeaks,
scrabblings, whines, the hiss of scales on decomposed pavement moved away hurriedly. Lady Midnight
rushed along the dank passage, through a doorway, into a brightly lighted room, where she fell
trembling into Turtle's arms.
Only after her heartbeat slackened and her shaking
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • 5
stopped was she smitten by the incongruity of being held and comforted by a creature so much
shorter.
Strange as she was, Midnight was human. Turtle was not.
Turtle stood 1.75 meters tall and 1 meter wide. He massed 125 kilos, not a gram of it fat. He had
skin the color and texture of a snake's belly. His features vaguely resembled a turtle's. But
there was nothing slow or lumbering about him. He moved like a cat.
Amber Soul drifted inside, now wearing human form, draped in apparent golden brocade. Half a meter
taller than Midnight, she seemed regal. Her psionic menace had gone silent. They grow bolder.
"It's the madness," Midnight piped. "It's spreading. It's into UpTown and even the High City feels
its breath." Turtle had said that last time. She did not think of things like that herself.
"They got their messenger out?" Turtle asked.
"Yes. Aboard a Cholot Traveler. Disguised as the child of a High City lord from F. M'Cartica 5."
"So the infection bounds from world to world. They are fools. Where was the Traveler bound?"
"P. Jaksonica."
Turtle settled into a chair, for all his lethal mass a weary little creature. He picked at a
button on his homemade shirt. "Yes. The thing will be fool enough to try it. P. Jaksonica 3. Still
under the Ban."
Turtle always knew so much. He amazed everyone. How could he know, trapped here in Merod Schene
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (2 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
DownTown?
He looked Midnight in the eye. "The cure will not be long coming if it tries to reach Cholot
Varagona." He closed his reptilian eyes briefly, which was no closing at all, for he had only
nictating membranes. "Bless the Concord. There is no saving fools. Ladies, it is time we saw to
our own welfare."
Is there no chance for the Concord? Amber Soul asked. Just the edge of that thought was enough to
make Midnight's head buzz. Amber Soul almost never communicated with anyone. When she did she
knocked you down.
"None," Turtle said. "The thing is one of those jackstraw rebellions that come along every human
generation. I have6 • Glen Cook
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS
seen a hundred. They don't last. The Enherrenraat did not last a year and it was five hundred in
the shaping." He paused, then asked rhetorically, "How old are the Guard-ships? They were old when
I was young. Sometimes it seems the stars themselves are younger and the Guardships were created
old and wily and deadly and there was never a moment when they were not invincible."
No one knew Turtle's true age. Turtle would not say. They joked that DownTown had been built
around him.
Turtle seldom talked about Turtle. Whence had he come? What was he? The last indigene of V.
Rothica 4? There were ruins in the deserts. Unlikely that he was of the precursor race, though.
Nobody was that old.
An artifact, then? Like Lady Midnight? Created in a laboratory for some inscrutable purpose even
he had forgotten? The warrens of DownTown festered with artifacts who had outlived the usefulness
of their designs. And it was thick with mistakes. The hobby life designers seldom destroyed their
mistakes. They just turned them out. And some were terrible. And some bred true.
If not an artifact, might Turtle be an alien, lost, stranded, planetbound far from home?
That was the popular theory.
Turtle told nothing about himself directly, but Turtle told stories, only to the very young, on
the streets of DownTown. He mirrored childhood dreams, singing interstellar songs, spinning epics
of great ships clambering the Web. He told tales of warmer worlds and far suns, of races no Down-
Towner would ever see, of great fires searing the deep between the stars as warships met in
battles of unimaginable fury. Perhaps he spoke of the destruction of the Enherrenraat. Or perhaps
he spoke of another struggle more remote in space and time. He sang his songs of far wars in
shades of emotion that said he had seen them himself, that he might have been among those who had
gained only shattered dreams.
Turtle broke a long silence. "If it does try to carry its message to Cholot Varagona it will be
taken. Canon garrison
will pulse P. Jaksonica station. Every Traveler out will carry a call for the Guardships. The
first to arrive will pick the thing's brain to the last synapse. Then it will come sniffing up the
creature's backtrail. First stop: Merod Schene."
Lady Midnight trilled, "Will they be that terrible?"
"Huh! Worse than you imagine. A Cholot Traveler picks up a shapeshifting illegal of a race
supposedly eradicated from a Merod world and delivers it to a Cholot world under the Ban. They
will be thorough. We must assure our own safety. Precautions never taken are the only sort that
leave one with regrets."
Amber Soul paced. She radiated a harsh, almost angry concurrence backed by emotions dark and deep
and so powerful Lady Midnight cringed away from her.
"We may be in for interesting times," Turtle observed. "I suppose it had to happen."
- 3 -
WarAvocat was a lean old man whose dark uniform accentuated the pallor of his face. Deathshead.
Crawling with colors and shadows from the displays. Hard, dark eyes. Thin, tight lips that had
forgotten how to smile a thousand years ago. Sound seemed to fade as he approached, the air to
grow more chill.
WarAvocat took in the wall display in one devouring glance. "Satisfactory, WatchMaster."
"Grace, WarAvocat."
"Most satisfactory." Hanaver Strate moved toward the Probe team.
A Probe spokeswoman said, "The second approximation is up, WatchMaster. The lifeform in that pod
is both alien and engineered."8 • Glen Cook
Third WatchMaster's dispassion cracked. He did not need Gemina's ID. "A krekelen! No known alien
could have gotten near a Traveler's escape pods. The ship's own programmes would have prevented
it."
"Gemma concurs, sir."
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (3 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
WarAvocat almost smiled. It had been a long time without action. "Access, all crews." A shimmer
hovering behind him leapt his shoulder. "Alert, Red One." Alarms screamed. "All ready batteries
commence firing. Intercept and Pursuit, commence launch. ConCom. Assemble an I and I team for
transfer to P. Jaksonica station."
Third WatchMaster observed, "The pod is in the outer atmosphere already, WarAvocat."
Meaning the batteries' beams would lose coherency, that projectiles would be inaccurate, that the
fighters would be wasted because they could not go down into atmosphere.
"Missiles? No. Too late." They accelerated so swiftly they would hit atmosphere like hitting a
wall. "Perfectly timed. The thing is crafty."
"Hellspinners?"
"Probably too late for those, too. But they'll make an exemplary display." WarAvocat spoke to the
shimmer. "Access, Weapons. Hellspinners, loose. Access, Hall of the Soldiers. Soldiers, warm one
battalion of heavy infantry data-prepped for a search-and-kill in Cholot Varagona."
The air murmured, "Have you a unit preference, WarAvocat?"
"Whichever is up." WarAvocat's busy eye noted those from the off shifts who were tardy reaching
stations. Second WatchMaster was among the latest. He wilted under WarAvocat's glare. "Access,
Communications. Pulse to Station P. Jaksonica 3B. Total quarantine incoming Cholot Traveler
Glorious Spent. Responsibility: STASIS. WarAvocat, Guardship V77 Gemina."
WarAvocat recalled his interceptors and sent his pursuit fighters to escort the Traveler to dock.
"WatchMaster. Efficiency deserves opportunity. I'm sending you to station as prize officer.
Empowered to direct and employ I and I and STASIS."
Third WatchMaster flushed. Such an opportunity, un-
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • 9
planned, unscheduled, could make his career. Could get him
nominated to WarCrew. Could get him elected if he did his
job well. Or could shatter his chances forever if he fouled
up. "Grace, WarAvocat."
"The I and I team will leave soon. You'll have to hurry.
Second WatchMaster!"
Second arrived briskly, face red. "WarAvocat?" "Relieve Third. You'll stand his shifts in addition
to your
own."
Second WatchMaster swallowed. "Grace, WarAvocat." "Get going," WarAvocat told Third. "Don't
embarrass
me."
The Twist Masters loosed their unpredictable vortices. The furies ripped across space and clawed
at the atmosphere of P. Jaksonica 3, scrawling fire upon the skies of that world, birthing auroras
that would persist for days.
They rattled and scaled and scarred the falling pod but they did not stop it. At three thousand
meters the krekelen bailed out. At twenty-five hundred, Canon garrison took the pod under fire.
They reported the illegal destroyed.
In Hall of the Watchers they knew better. Track followed the krekelen to the surface and into the
city.
_ 4 -
Gloom was a fourth presence there with the three Im-munes. Midnight said, "I don't want to go out
there now. The Darkness has become the tyrant of the night."
Turtle replied, "Then don't go. Unless you have to dance tonight? Amber Soul and I could see you
to the lift."
Midnight was a cloud dancer, engineered for that and ex-10 • Glen Cook
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • II
otic erotic usage in House Banat-Marath. Her owner of record, a House Director's whelp on
wanderjahr, had become bored with his pretty toy and had discarded her, without documentation, her
only assets those designed into her fragile body.
She had survived.
"No. Not tonight. There's little demand for me now."
"Funny. I'd think just the opposite. Eat, drink, and make merry. Maybe trouble will go away."
Midnight lived in the High City usually, drifting from sponsor to sponsor. If she fell out of
fashion there, she worked the merchant baronets of UpTown, who strove to emulate the decadence of
their overlords. But DownTown was her spiritual home, as it was for all the outcast, the
discarded, the ignored, the ordinary, and the abhorred. Princes of lost and vanquished races
languished there, hip by thigh with pimps and murderers and worse.
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (4 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
"What do they know in the High City?" Turtle asked. "What do they feel? What do they fear? What do
they think?" Midnight was eyes and ears for the Immunes. The Canon lords did not guard their
tongues around her. She was a nothing, invisible.
"They know there's unrest. But they vie at demonstrating their indifference. They're amused by the
idea of rebellion. But the UpTown merchants are concerned. An uprising would be bad for business."
"Commerce will go to hell when that Guardship breaks off the Web. It will nail this rock down
tighter than a marble in a sealed cannister."
Will one come? Sure? Amber Soul remained unconvinced.
She could not comprehend humanity. The personas she projected functioned adequately, but even to
Turtle she seemed insubstantial, like a shadow cast from another dimension. There was no fathoming
her in her natural state.
She was an incredible rarity. How she had come to be stranded on V. Rothica 4 was a mystery. Even
she did not remember.
She had been around almost as long as Turtle. When he thought about it, he could recall when she
was not there but
not when she had arrived. He knew more about her than anyone, but what he knew was minute.
Amber Soul was a force in DownTown, an anima, feared by all, best ignored.
"They will come," Turtle assured her. "Sure as the darkness weaves the night from afternoon. The
breath of death is less certain than the vigilance of the Guardships. Pray that the Concord does
nothing stupid before the Guardship arrives. Its appearance will bank their ardor." He reflected a
moment. "This krekelen business has an odor. I suspect a manipulation by some House."
"They wouldn't stir rebellion against themselves, would they?" Midnight protested. She remained as
naive as Amber Soul remained mysterious.
"They would, and they have done. The Enherrenraat was born from a greed-fever dream in Cholot and
Merod. The dream grew up to become a nightmare. Cholot and Merod are paying still. The fury of the
Guardships was so exemplary that it has not been challenged since, but the universe spawns fools
and insects in numbers beyond all reason."
Something tickled the outside walls; something tested the door. An odor hovered on the brink of
perception, like the electric promise before a storm. There were rustlings and what could have
been whispers, a harassment that had begun after Midnight's arrival. It had grown worse as
darkness flowed like slime between the ten thousand legs supporting DownTown. It was pure night
out now. The creatures of darkness were on the hunt.
One wall groaned and bowed as something huge pressed against it. A network of lines spread upon
the bulge. They widened, overflowed one another, turned the brown of paper too near a flame.
Something oozed through, trickled down. It was the color of blood.
"That is quite enough!" Turtle snapped, exasperated.
Amber Soul rested spidery fingers upon the bulge. A psionic darkness filled the room, a ghost of
menace that hammered through the wall. There were muted cries. Then silence.12 • Glen Cook
"They are playing intimidation games. In their insanity, they will pass beyond games soon. We will
confer with the others tomorrow. Steps must be taken."
There were eleven Immunes in Merod Schene. None supported the Concord.
Turtle turned to Midnight. "How is Lord Askenasry?"
"He's still alive. He grows weaker, though his will remains steel. He won't be with us much
longer. I dance for him once a week. He no longer makes other demands."
"Will you dance for him again soon?"
"Tomorrow night."
"Does he remember me?"
"He asks about you sometimes."
"Ask if he will see me. Tell him I'm ready to collect."
"If we survive the night." A timorous creature, she was shaking.
"We will survive this night and many more," Turtle promised. "We will outlive the Concord. / must.
I have much to do before I go."
- 5 -
... whine dying. An exclamatory ping!
Jo Klass drew a frigid breath of medicine and machine, opened her eyes. She felt eager, curious, a
touch of trepidation. What would it be? Warming was like wakening to a day guaranteed to be
exciting.
How long had she slept?
Not that it mattered. Nothing changed.
As always there was a moth flutter of panic as the air grew hot and humid. The cell walls pressed
in. Its lid opa-
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (5 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • 13
qued with moisture. She scrawled an obscenity in the condensation.
The lid opened. Beyond lay the familiar white overhead of the warming room. How many times had she
wakened thus, staring up at that sky of pipe and cable? Too often to recall.
Air swirled in, chilled her.
What was it? Another Enherrenraatl Fear stroked her. She had died that time. It haunted her,
though the bud had detoured her around it.
Sometimes she thought she dreamed about dying while she was in the cell, but she remembered no
dreams once she wakened.
A face drifted into view. "Off and on, soldier." No relief at finding her alive instead of a
shriveled blue-black mummy. No expression at all. Just on to the next cell and next check.
Jo bounced out as filled with vitality as anyone in perfect health could be. Her squad tumbled out
of neighboring cells, as naked as she. Shaigon eyed her, thoughts obvious. "Watch it, soldier."
"I am, Sarge. I am." He lifted one shaggy eyebrow.
"Later. Maybe. If you're a good boy." She counted ears and divided by two. All present. "Let's
move." Their cells had returned to stowage. The team followed her, mouthing the usual gibes and
wisecracks. Clary and Squat grabbed hands. A sleep in the ice had not changed their relationship.
Eyes roved old comrades, seeking remembered scars. Unmarked skin could say a lot about last time
out.
They dressed in loose black shipboards and retrieved personals. Clad and inspected, Jo led them
toward the briefing center. News of the day drifted back from earlier squads.
"Hanaver Strate is WarAvocat now."
"Wasn't he Chief of Staff? What year is it?"
"Year forty-three of the Deified Kole Marmigus. Strate got elected Dictat, too."
"One of the living? I thought the first requirement was you had to be Deified."
Colorless laughter.14 • Glen Cook
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • IS
Marmigus Deified? It had been a long time. He'd just become OpsAvocat last time they were out.
"Must have been slow times."
"Bet it's a routine cleanup, Sarge. Ain't nobody in a hurry."
"Ship is Red One, Hake."
"Ain't breaking out nobody but infantry. Somebody dropped a condiment tray."
Jo paused at the theater hatchway. "Can it, troops."
They entered a space where thirty thousand could be seated. They nodded to soldiers they knew,
found seats, stared at their officers, waited. Above the stage, in large but unpretentious
letters, was the motto, "I Am A Soldier." It was posted over every exit from WarCrew country. It
emblazoned a patch worn by WarCrew, encircling a numeral VII superimposed upon a caricature of the
tutelary, a naked woman running that did not seem warlike to Jo.
How about a wide, muscular thug like her, short, ratty hair and a bloody ax in hand? Be more like
the truth.
People did not shy away when Jo Klass walked past, but she could not be convinced that she was not
unattractive.
The lander grounded. Jo trudged out into P. Jaksonica 3's reddish daylight. Hake had it right.
They were cleaning up a spill. A krekelen shapechanger, for Tawn's sake!
She glared at Cholot Varagona. It looked like every out-port city on every House-dominated world
in Canon. The houses were so damned conservative they would not stray from one standard prefab
design. If you wanted something different, you had to hunt up a non-House world.
The High City floated a thousand meters up, connected to UpTown by a flexible tube containing
passenger and freight lifts. The proconsuls of the House, the very rich and their hangers-on,
remained safely isolated there.
The legs of UpTown lifted it, too, above the perils of a world poorly tamed and, especially, above
the taint of the tamers. Administrators and functionaries; Canon garrison if there was one; House
dependent, cadet, and allied merchants; contract operators; these lived UpTown.
DownTown was the base of the social pyramid. Its own gradient declined toward the deepest shadow
beneath the belly of UpTown.
Some were big, some were small, but that basic structure formed the capital on ten thousand
worlds.
Jo activated her suit and bounced to her right. Her squad followed. Sensors systems came up,
displaying in color on the sensitized inner surface of her face plate, defining her surroundings.
She could breathe the air. It was not too cold out there. But the info she cared about was that
there were no unfriendly weapons nearby.
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (6 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
Data from VII Gemina, relayed from the lander, interrupted once a minute for five seconds, mapping
the city as Probe saw it. The krekelen remained stationary near the heart of DownTown.
City work. Jo hated it. Cities were treacherous. You never knew who would hit you with what from
where. The system was not great at detecting non-energy weapons.
Linkup. Circle complete. Nothing would get out. Came the order to advance.
Jo glanced up at the High City, at the flaming star of VII Gemina, which seemed tangled among
fairy spires. How frightened they must be, those Cholot lordlings, wondering if the landing party
had come to end the Ban by toppling UpTown and killing the High City's gravs.
There was no resistance. The few beings Jo saw stood rigidly immobile, staring with terrified
eyes. Seldom had she seen so many sports, discards, and bizarre aliens. And this world had been
allowed no outside contact for centuries. The creepy-crawlies were taking over.
The target did not move till the circle was under a kilometer in diameter. Jo's faceplate began
displaying Gemina track in five second alternates with suit local. Up on battalion net, for all
officers and NCOs: "A reminder from up top, people. We will take it alive." No commentary, of
course. That was there only in tone.
I Am A Soldier.
Corollary: I Obey.
On platoon net: "It's headed our way, people."16 • Glen Cook
Jo matched Gemina-feed with a suit-local heat trace a hundred meters out. She outlocked Gemina,
fixed the track, switched on squad tac. "Coming right down our throats, guys."
"Why can't we see it? You see it, Sarge? Anybody see it?"
No one did. But it ought to be visible. It was on top of them.
Top! She looked up, adjusted to max enhancement. There. Something scuttling along a beam.
Her bolt edged it perfectly. It went into nerve lock, clung to a stress lattice branching from a
pylon, slowly changed into what looked like a black plastic film. Jo switched to platoon tac.
"Platoon, Second Squad. We got it."
- 6 -
The chamber was a perfect globe a thousand meters across. A great mass floated near its heart,
slightly upward as gravity was oriented. Lightning leaped from the curved walls to the mass. Tin-
sheet thunder beat its chest and howled around the cavity. Gouts of red, gaseous flame exploded
across the darkness. Self-congratulatory devil's laughter pranced between the valleys of the
thunder.
A woman stood in the mouth of a corridor ending at the wall of the chamber. "He's in a dramatic
mood today." Her companion was a youth who looked seventeen. She looked twenty-one. He was. She
was not. She was much older and more cruel. The sorrow of the torturer looked out through her pale
blue eyes.
"When will we kill him?" The boy's dark eyes were not
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • 17
those of an adolescent. The rest of him looked naive and young and innocent, but his eyes were
those of a predator.
She slapped him. "Don't say that! Don't even think it this close to him." She laughed. "Not soon.
After he succeeds. // he succeeds." Though not as loud her laughter was as wicked as that
racketing around the globular cavity. "Who wants to inherit a disaster?"
The boy shivered. It was cold there, and gloomy, and something in the air reminded him of
graveyards before dawn. "Why did he summon us?"
"Probably because he needs to proclaim his genius, and Lupo Provik doesn't feed his ego because
Lupo refuses to be impressed." She palmed a bright plate on the corridor wall. "Father! We're
here."
The show doubled in intensity. Lightning arrows thumped the wall near the corridor's end.
Hologramatic monsters slithered the air, snapping and clawing, breathing fire and spitting venom.
A black gondola manned by a skeletal gondolier approached imperturbed through the fury.
Backlighting betrayed the hologram. The thing was a grav-sled and humanoid robot tricked up by the
imagination of Simon Tre-gesser.
The sled nudged the wall. The woman stepped aboard. The youth hesitated, followed. The whig of
fear cast one brief shadow upon his face.
His features hardened into naive inscrutability. He was learning.
One learned if one intended to survive amongst House Tregesser's ruling family.
The sled glided toward the heart of the cavity. A closed, transparent bell filled with dark smoke
hung from the machinery there, which supported the thing inside and made of its will realities.
The sled stopped ten meters away. Search probes tickled its passengers.
A grotesque face pressed against the inner surface of the bell. The smoke faded, revealed the
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (7 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
wreckage of a body, one arm withered, the rest gnawed by fire, blind, all the18 • Glen Cook
handiwork of an assassin who had been almost lucky enough.
"Ah. My loving child Valerena. And her plaything."
"My son, Father."
A shrill cackle surrounded her. "I have eyes that see farther and deeper than these blind scars.
But who or what you bed is your own affair." A moment. "Are you Valerena indeed? Or her Other?"
"I'm Valerena Prime."
"That's a comfort. Sometimes I think you send your Other when your conscience bothers you."
Guilty, Valerena tried to change the subject. "Why did you summon us?"
"The most pessimistic projections suggest that the beast is down on P. Jaksonica 3 and has been
recognized. That entire Presidency will be crawling with Travelers carrying the alarm. We count
the game begun. Soon they'll come sniffing up the trail. And we'll seize a Guardship for House Tre-
gesser."
"You underestimate them." Valerena sounded tired. She had argued this before. "You risk the
existence of House Tregesser against a quantity you know only from fragmentary reports that
survived the Enherrenraat."
"I have shielding the equal of theirs. I have Lupo. The rest is firepower. When the Guardship
arrives it will be cut off from the Web and under fire so intense its screens have to overload.
It'll be surrender or die. The only choice they give the rest of the universe. Then House
Tregesser will have its Guardship, Hellspinners, and the secret of lifting so vast a mass onto the
Web."
"That's the strategy of the Enherrenraat revenant. They thought they'd win with firepower. They're
extinct. The Guardships aren't. And they're five hundred years wiser now."
"Five hundred years more senile, child. Five hundred years more frozen into old ways."
Blessed stepped in. "Why did you call me here, Grandfather?"
"You're the heir of my heir. It's time you learned why your mother and I doppelled; so we can work
on this uncon-
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS
19
cerned by the jealousies of lesser Houses and the spiteful interference of the Guardships. They
can't suspect us of schemes and duplicities if their spies see our Others devoting themselves to
the interests of House Tregesser."
The thing in the bell roared, "A thousand years has House Tregesser prepared! In our generations
the hour has come at last!"
"Yes, Grandfather. Grandfather, where did you find a krekelen? They're supposed to be extinct."
"I have my resources, boy. Valerena! I need a woman. Send me one. And this time make her one with
some juice left. That last one was a crone."
Valerena flared. "She was twenty years younger than I am!"
"Ah? Then maybe I should use you while there's a dollop of juice left in you." A pendulous, maggot-
colored, impossibly huge organ slithered through a sudden opening in the floor of the bell. "Come
here."
"No."
"Then send me a woman who will please me. Or take her place yourself. Go away. I have no more use
for you."
The skeletal gondolier began poling toward the corridor mouth.
"Noah!"
A black, winged man dropped down between the gamboling lightnings. He lighted on a tongue of metal
protruding from the great machine. "Lord?"
"How was I, Noah?"
"You were madness itself."
"Were they convinced?"
"I believe so."
"Ha! And will they try to kill me, then?"
"Someday."
"How soon?"
"Not soon. They will wait till after you capture the Guardship. They will want to steal a
triumph."
"And they'll want to avoid the consequences if I fail, eh?"
"Yes, Lord."20 • Glen Cook
THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • 21
"Does Valerena know she's not the first Valerena?"
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (8 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
"I think not. You indulge her too much, Lord."
"I have no other heir."
"It's your funeral."
"If I become so lax as to let her reach me here, then House Tregesser deserves more alert, more
aggressive leadership anyway."
"Such is the custom."
"Watch them. See their every hair fall."
"And the woman they send you?"
"Yours, if you want her."
"Grace, Lord."
Simon Tregesser's bell clouded. Outside, the show ached up toward a shattering crescendo.
Lightnings and coils of darkness slithered around the bell till no eye could have pieced it out of
the chaos.
The bell rose into the belly of the machine. Chaos died. Silence took mastery of the cavity. A
lone winged form glided the stillness.
Simon Tregesser's prosthetic eyes stared through the bell wall at his special secret. The thing
had adopted an especially repugnant arrangement, almost demonic, perhaps in response to the show
outside. Tregesser smiled as much as he could with ruined lips. Valerena did not know, but this
thing from Outside would give House Tregesser its Guard-ship.
He hoped.
Down in the shadowed heart of him he nurtured the very doubts his daughter had flung in his face.
And he did not trust this emissary from Yon, this ally whose urgings had led him to push House
Tregesser's plans beyond endless preparation to considered action. Simon Tregesser did not trust
anyone or anything he did not own completely, excepting Lupo Provik. Lupo was his good arm and
good body and, sometimes, his brain.
An infantile display, Simon Tregesser. What do we gain by spawning machinations within
machinations? There is
but one goal. Let us devote ourselves with an appropriately holy fervor.
Tregesser sensed its contempt. The disgusting monster. A shot of oxygen into that methane murk
would set it dancing in the fires. Someday ... the moment the Guardship surrendered. "You heard my
daughter. Here, in private, between us, I second her doubts. You want me to dice with fate
depending entirely upon your screens."
They are the ultimate possible within the laws of this universe. They are identical with those
deployed by Guard-ships.
"So you say."
Our observations during the Enherrenraat incident leave no doubt.
"There's always room for doubt when you tempt the invincible. If you were that close to the action
then, you were dead."
The thing did not respond.
"I suppose it's too late. I'm committed."
You are committed, Simon Tregesser. Forever.
Simon Tregesser's methane breathing ally set a thought vibrating along the Web. Every development
must be registered lest it be lost.
The Tregesser creature was right. To observe the Guard-ship screens under pressure, it had been
necessary for observers to be too close to survive. They had left their data vibrating on the Web.
This creature, too, would leave such a legacy if the time came.
What mattered was that the Guardship should come. That it should be tested and, if conquered, be
rescued from the false ambition of fools and unbelievers.
The Guardships threatened to doom the truths of the Shadowed Path.
Death did not matter. Death was but a destination. The Shadowed Path led away in ten thousand
directions but always ended in the same place, the maw of the Destroyer.
Always better to be the knife than its victim.THE DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS • 23
- 7 -
Third WatchMaster strode out the hatch. The stench and uproar and alien perspectives of the
curving station dock hit him like blows, stunned him momentarily. Those creatures beyond the
STASIS cordon... most were not even human!
His body kept moving till a portly, florid man said, "Commander Haget? I'm Schilligo Magnahs,
Station Master. This is Gitto Otten, Director, Station Security and Investigation Section."
"Gentlemen." He clicked his heels. "The situation is?" He had no patience with ceremony. It wasted
time.
"Static, Commander. The Traveler was brought to dock and locked in, per directive. STASIS seals
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (9 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt
were placed, quarantine was established. Not an electronic whisper has escaped. We awaited your
arrival before proceeding."
"Satisfactory. WarAvocat will be pleased. Let's examine this Traveler that spits mythical aliens."
"Mythical, Commander?"
"Legendary and extinct, if you prefer. Probe showed the pod occupied by a krekelen shapechanger."
"But that's..."
"Exactly. Impossible. Yes. Soldiers are searching Cholot Varagona now. We'll have the thing soon.
Then we'll see if it's genuine." Third WatchMaster continued to scan the dock, struggling with
discomfort. He had not been off VII Gemina in too long. He had forgotten how mongrelized Canon
space had become.
The Station Master sensed and misinterpreted his malaise. "Pardon the confusion and gawking,
Commander. We see your people so seldom, curiosity tends to cause chaos dockside."
22
Third WatchMaster loosed a dry chuckle. "Diplomatically said, Station Master."
Station Traffic had brought VII Gemma's courier gig in four bays from the Cholot Traveler. The
walk was shorter than Third WatchMaster's daily trek to his station in Hall of the Watchers. It
gave him no time to regain his equilibrium.
The quarantined dockhead was properly sealed and cordoned. Third WatchMaster overheard onlookers
discussing his party.
"Bunch of bloody zombies."
"Think if one of them smiled, his face would break?"
Third WatchMaster looked at the man. He flushed, lost interest, hurried away.
The STASIS Director returned the comm to its cradle. "They're going to open up now."
Machinery grumbled. STASIS agents leveled weapons. Vehicle doors thumped on the concourse as
drivers dismounted and prepared to take on detainees. The personnel lock of the Cholot Traveler
opened.
Third WatchMaster strode inside.
The Traveler's operating officers were shaky. One lean, red-faced passenger waited with them. The
piping on his apparel pronounced him prominent in House Cholot.
A little man stepped forward, extended a hand that Third WatchMaster ignored. "Commander Haget?
I'm Chief Operating Officer Timmerbach."
Third WatchMaster nodded. "How do you do?" He looked down the tight passageway beyond the crew, at
the passengers. "Everyone turned out?"
"With the exception of two nonhumans requiring special environments."
"This farce must cease! I demand you end this absurd imprisonment immediately!"
Third WatchMaster did not glance at the civilian. He told the nearest I & I man, "That one fails
the attitude test. Make certain he's the last processed out."
"Yes sir."
"You bloody... do you know who I am?"
"No. Who you are is a matter of .supreme indifference."24 • Glen Cook
"You bloody well better get interested. I'm Hanhl Cholot, of House Cholot Directorate."
Sweating, red, shaking, Chief Timmerbach tried to calm his owner's representative.
Turning away, Third WatchMaster said, "STASIS, after you process the Director, hold him as a
material witness. If his attitude fails to improve, we'll transfer him to VII Ge-mina."
Cholot's attitude improved instantly, if not sincerely. Even a first trip downside functionary
ignorant of the ways of the Web knew you did not get yourself dragged aboard a Guardship if you
had hopes of feeling earth beneath your feet again.
Glorious Spent was exactly like every other Traveler. The shipbuilders of House Majhellain
constructed only three basic forms: the fat bulk cargo Hauler, the more common cargo/passenger
Traveler, and the yachtlike Voyager for the rich. Every ship of a class was exactly like every
other.
The horror Third WatchMaster found while inspecting passenger compartments was on the manifest. He
had been warned by Timmerbach that Glorious Spent carried two aliens who had boarded on the
Atlantean Rim. But...
It looked like a group-grope involving giant hydras and starfish atop a heap of exposed
intestines. It was some sort of colonial, symbiotic intelligence. It was a methane breather, which
explained why it had not turned out for the passenger muster.
It was revolting.
What the hell excuse was there for letting something that hideous run loose? What was Canon coming
to?
By contrast the second alien, shimmering golden as it stared back from the corner of its cabin,
file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt (10 of 169) [2/14/2004 12:17:39 AM]
摘要：

file:///G|/rah/Glen%20Cook%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Never%20Sleeps.txt-I-Guardship:VI!GeminaOnreststationintrojanL5offRjaksonica311/2.3shipsyear368!;year43oftheDeifiedKoleMarmigusDictate:TheDeifiedAnseh!Ronygos,dct12WarAvocatHanaverStrate,dct.IAlertstatus:GreenThreeWarCrewsleeping[,03dutysection]Surveil...

展开>> 收起<<
Cook, Glen - The Dragon Never Sleeps.pdf

共169页,预览10页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：169 页 大小：553.25KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-06

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 169
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注