DoctorWho_TheComingoftheTerraphiles - (EPUB全文下载)

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MICHAEL
MOORCOCK
BOOKS
For all the Chabons
WHOEVER NAMED THE PLANET Venice named her well. Her golden surface was crossed by a million regular waterways so that from space she resembled a papal orb. Clouds followed the canals in season and emphasised rather than obscured her geometric character. Venice was a rich and lively world.
More space travellers deserted to her than to any other of her nine or so rivals in the star system of Calypso V, whose ranks included Ur XVII and the extraordinarily beautiful New Venus where colonists risked every danger to enjoy her yearningly lovely landscapes.
Like all inhabited worlds, Venice was forbidden to the great rockets of the IGP and the larger interstellar mercantile vessels of the Terran service, whose routes were frequently challenged by privateers in their subtler, sometimes faster ships, some of which still used the increasingly erratic solar winds for power. The twelfth intergalactic war, which had destroyed whole star systems, left by common consent the planetary prizes unspoiled, and surface conflicts were confined to the legally conventional weapons of the region.
In Venice's case, these included battle barges of enormous dimensions, their hulls driven by massive sails whose canvas covered distances measured in fractions of square miles rather than cubed metres, and speedy little gondolas employing oars as regularly as they used wind. These boats darted along the wide natural waterways like bugs, their sweeps so many articulated limbs. From space, on the great V-screens, they appeared as creatures endowed with minds and purposes of their own. Cornelius the pirate had once employed those gondolas very successfully in pursuit of his trade, taking full advantage of the confusions and disguises offered by war. For the past half-century, however, he had made little use of them.
There were few land wars on Venice, few conflicts of any kind now. All traffic was conducted by water. Canals occupied four-fifths of the planet's surface. Venice was not one of the many terraformed planets created by the great commercial world-building companies. Whatever gravities had shaped her had done so naturally. People had long since discovered that symmetry was characteristic of most planets, formed in the nativity of their geology. Even the howling, fruitful terraces of Arcturus-and-Arcturus owed their existence to this familiar phenomenon and were merely exploited by the commercial terraforming families who created mainly Ear ............

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