文档介绍：SHIRA CALPURNIA - LEGACY
PROLOGUE
THEIR LORD AND master had been carried into the trees at the opening of
the day, and instead of the morning clarion, the halls of the flotilla's
spacecraft had rung with a single soft mourning-chime. Those
appointed to it followed the catafalque into the arboretum deck,
through the shin-high mint-grass with the insects around them
chirruping in the morning air. The creatures had been chosen from a
dozen worlds for the beauty of their sounds, both individual and in
choir, and although the lord was too close to death to be able to hear
them he would have been happy with the sounds in these his last
hours.
Gait stood one rank back from the catafalque, head bowed, the white
linen of the cover-cloth glimmering like summer cloud across the top of
his vision. He wore the white gown and black shawl that they all did;
his face, as all of theirs, was painted with the intricate downward-
curving black and white patterns of mourning. The paint was mixed
with an anaesthetic that deadened the face and numbed his skin to the
feel of the warm artificial breeze, but he could still feel the stir of the
cloth and the brush of the grass against his legs and his bare feet. He
stood looking at the grass below and in front of his laced hands, and
now that the moment they had all been preparing for e he
found that his mind was empty and calm. He ed the sensation -
he was too tired to carry any more emotion after the past year.
They stood and waited. The two black-hooded senior medicae standing
on either side of the catafalque were the only ones to move, following
the movements of their diagnostor, a silver replica of a human heart
with spidery mechanical hands growing from its sides, as it glided
slowly to and fro about the lord's head.
Time passed. The singing of the insects was a soothing counterpoint to
the lazy sounds of the carefully-choreographed breezes in the
arboretum's trees.
And finally, a