Читать книгу Super Queen-Mother. Book III. The Seventh - Евгений Шмигирилов - Страница 5

Nobody looked for her at home; everybody was sure she was having a rest in one of the rooms.

Super Queen-Mother walked about the house and went into the yard. It was small and cosy. She thought that soon she would have to move to another place.

Super Queen-Mother tried to imagine what her new place of work would be. She had to discuss everything with architects to help them to arrange it as she wanted. That would be a little later, however; now she had to meet the people she would work with.

Super Queen-Mother took a pencil and a copybook and went up to the terrace. There she dropped into a chaise longue, put on sun-glasses and settled in to write.

She wanted to write down the structure of governance as she had pictured it to herself, and then to discuss it with the specialists. Then she would cut some links and would add the new ones she had missed.

It was not a simple task, and Super Queen-Mother sat up at it deep into the night. She could not sleep. She was tossing and turning in her bed, thinking that Earth managing would be a difficult task, though she did not have any enemies here, willing to kill her. The Earth Keepers checked in: she heard the light noise of the breakers, the remote cries of sea gulls, and saw a great number of beautiful, small fish, jumping out of the water and shining in the sun.

They were falling down into the sea and jumping out up again, playing their games, which nobody else could understand.

Super Queen-Mother quickly fell asleep, charmed with this shining vision.

In the morning, after a brief breakfast, she was ready to work.

The security officer reported to her that everything was ready for the trip to the forthcoming meeting.

Super Queen-Mother looked back.

The empty roadway from time to time revived – an emergency vehicle, rushing at great speed, sparkled with signal lights and broke the silence with a wailing siren. Then it became quiet again.

Super Queen-Mother raised her head. Helicopters were hovering in the sky not far from her, forming a big circle with her house in its center.

Farther and a bit higher, two military planes were flying, also in circles.

Super Queen-Mother went up to the roadway and got into a black car. The motorcade took off.

Fifteen minutes later it stopped in front of the entrance to the stadium, where she had usually held all her meetings.

Super Queen-Mother got out of the car and looked around. Everything was the same, as if she had never left it.

Military ships, submarines, missile launchers and planes were at their usual locations.

Super Queen-Mother went inside the stadium and stopped in the middle of the field.

The stadium was full. Members of her team and her security were also there. There were not enough vacant seats, so all aisles were also crowded.

Super Queen-Mother fixed the microphone she had brought with her, greeted the audience and congratulated them on their first working day.

In her speech she described the work of her department in general terms and defined the location of her main team.

A big complex of buildings was chosen as a temporary place of work. Each separate building was the headquarters of one continent.

The offices were located in the alphabetical order – from “A” to “Z”, from the first floor to the top one, the same number of offices for each country.

Super Queen-Mother read out her appointments order to a position of the heads for departments and their staff. She also determined the primary task of arrangements at the new spot and for setting up information channels of each department with its country.

The official part was over, and Super Queen-Mother wished everyone good luck in their work.

She came back home and began to plan her own working and living place. It had to consist of two interconnected zones – an insular one, on the sea, and a mountain zone.

Super Queen-Mother drew an ellipse on a big ground map. It was two miles long and a mile wide and began about fifty feet from the offshore coastal strip.

A long concrete dam in the form of a horseshoe protected it from the sometimes raging sea. The dam was a quarter of a mile from it and was laid with stone boulders on two sides, covered with sand on the top.

Such man-made beaches could be an additional resting place for the islanders.

She drew a big lagoon inside the ellipse – a marine for pleasure yachts.

Then she drew a road from the island to the nearest mountain – a future tunnel which had to be a road and a railway tunnel at the same time, for a small archaistic locomotive and almost toy coaches.

After that Super Queen-Mother proceeded to the mountain part of her project.

This part of her plan was more detailed.

At the point of juncture of two mountain rivers, in front of the narrow, long gorge, she drew a high dam.

Its height allowed raising the water level in the gorge with the right tribute, to make it accessible to small boats and yawls.

The flooded left tribute would make an arch-like lake, with a curve near the dam, one and a half to two miles long. It would be an excellent area for boating.

The flooded river-banks had to be embedded in concrete with walking routes along them and a park with numerous fountains, flower beds and small comfortable cafes.

To the right of the right tribute Super Queen-Mother mapped a small railway station.

The trains, coming out of the tunnel, would cross the river over the dam and stop at the station.

Farther on it would cross the river over a metal cobweb bridge. A wonderful view of the beautiful gorge of white limestone opened from its pedestrian part.

From the bridge, the railway road ran to the mountain slope, to its track built in a half-oval cut out in the rock, above the precipice.

After that, the railway road went to another bridge, only a stone one, decorated with various granite sculptures and gilded copper statues.

It joined the two banks of the left river tributary. From it, the railway road went to the tunnel, leading to the island in the sea.

Super Queen-Mother thought that a two-storied café might be built in the dam body, from the side of the gorge, under the stream of the falling water.

It would be an assembly point for tourists and the start of the walking route from the left side of the gorge to the spring, spouting from the ground half a mile from it, down the river.

Right after the gorge, ahead of the spring, she wanted to make a walking site with a café.

Farther, a sideway would go from the walking site over a bridge, hanging above the river, to the right side of it.

Then the road would serpentine up the long-lying talus of limestone to the path, trailed during centuries, and lead to an old fortress.

Behind the fortress the path had to be widened and continued farther to the gorge, thus closing the walking route at the café in the dam.

Super Queen-Mother, in her mind, once more walked on the route she had drawn.

She saw a large rest site raised over the river, embedded in concrete, on its left bank, where the path went out of the gorge, with numerous small tables on it set with hot drinks and lap blankets on the chairs.

The area was bounded by a low parapet made of crude stone, which continued around the whole square, except for its left edge.

There the marble staircase began, going down to the spouting spring, for those, who wanted to drink water from it. From this edge of the site, near the staircase, a passage to the hanging bridge also began.

Super Queen-Mother pondered over her plan – what else she could do with the park zone at the lower tier of the plot of land, allocated to her, and… left it for the architects, to unite everything in one whole.

The upper tier of the tableland, just above the lower one, was her proximate place of work. It was a small mountainous plateau, stretching along the river, slightly sloping to the lower tier and ending in a rock-chasm.

She drew one hundred feet high fort walls at the precipice, with square towers at the corners and semicircular ones along the walls. Super Queen-Mother planned a wide walking path on them, under a transparent glass shed.

The walls of the fortress would extend not only over the lower tier of the site, but would also surround the upper tableland.

Along the wall there had to be a walking path and a bikeway.

The lowering part of the mountainous plateau had to be raised much higher by means of grouted concrete ceilings, supported by concrete poles.

She planned to provide the buildings with parking facilities, a power plant, all housing services and public utilities.

The remaining part of the plateau Super Queen-Mother divided into:

– Administrative zone, where they had to work;

– A housing area;

– A sport zone;

– An entertainment zone;

– A park.

The park zone was a small woodland on the lowering part of the plateau, bounded by the precipice, the river and the road, leading to a huge abandoned foundation pit (Super Queen-Mother planned to make an excellent lake out of it, filled with large carps).

The park had to be fenced and provided with iron lanes, raised over the ground, not to interfere with the movements of the forest dwellers.

Between the administrative sector and the housing zone would be a theatre, a restaurant, a multiplex and several hotels.

Super Queen-Mother decided to design the housing sector with seven-storey buildings with dwelling mansards, and fretwork on the front, around the windows and doors.

She also included numerous small cafes on narrow paved streets and shops on the first floors of the buildings.

A stadium, a swimming pool and open sport sites had to be near the housing sector.

At the top she planned a big church and a sightseeing platform a thousand feet from it, with five or seven cafes.

Super Queen-Mother marked a layout scheme of buildings and constructions on the map, invited the architects over and told them what she wished.

Their meeting was short; they at once went to the spot to define the boundaries of the planned construction.

Super Queen-Mother decided to help the builders and cut out a tunnel, connecting the mountainous and insular parts of the project, thus accelerating the construction.

The workers had only to smooth the floor of the tunnel, to fit out ground-water runoff on the left and on the right, and to lay a rail track alongside with the auto-road.

Thereafter nobody had time to turn round. The architects controlled the construction. Documentation was being prepared and signed in parallel with construction.

The builders worked in three shifts.

The islands were laid with granite boulders.

The bridge, connecting the tunnel and the island, was asphalted.

A high dam was built at the spot of the confluence of the rivers.

The river beds were widened and reinforced.

The banks of both rivers were raised and decorated with granite tile and marble banisters.

People planted many trees, and builders made many fountains. A large park sprang up near the newly made lake. Part of the lake joined with the canyon.

On the top of the plateau, where Super Queen-Mother’s place of work had to be, the workers were concreting the foundations of the buildings.

Narrow pedestrian streets and sidewalks were paved with durable granite.

Constructional materials were supplied in a steady flow. Tens of thousands of people were working from morning till late at night.

For the period of the construction, Super Queen-Mother lived in a cottage, situated not far from the buildings where her services of the Earth managing were.

To store all the information, Super Queen-Mother used the hall of the Earth Keepers.

There she walked her live body and worked in it.

She had plenty of work and had to digest the material that the Galaxy had sent her. She wanted to select the most important things to understand what to do first.

It took a lot of time, and Super Queen-Mother asked the managerial staff of the Galaxy “Milky Way” to systemize the information before sending it to her.

It would be easier to understand where to begin to go in the right direction, step after step.

The Earth Keepers did not interfere with her work. They were silently observing how she was doing.

All divisions of her department were overloaded with the new information. The staff worked till late.

A great many in new technologies surprised them:

A small flying apparatus in a blink shifted to any designated spot. It did not need to be controlled and did all that was required of it.

She was particularly impressed by some sub-disciplines of galactic medicine, notably by the properties of keratinized (dead) cells: it appeared they sent bad (dark) information to the body, in the form of energy, which was able to run even to its inward parts and to cause illnesses.

Some information required another level of knowledge: each live cell had an energy black hole, with a core as the base of it.

It emitted ring-shaped energy bunches, which, for reasons undefined, could also be directed to the black hole.

Super Queen-Mother tossed her head and stopped drilling down into the depths of the information she had received, leaving it to the professionals.

New technologies, passed on to the earthly people, demanded not only the construction of new plants, but also changing the relations inside and between countries.

New transport means could not be limited by the existing boundaries, because the flight to the other end of the world could be performed instantly. So, the boundaries were kept, but they did not mean so much as earlier.

Governments had to make many new regulating laws.

Changing of some laws entailed the revision of others.

Problems accrued more and more.

They were acceptable problems, however.

It was important not to get drowned in new knowledge.

Super Queen-Mother did not have time for private life.

She did not forget to see her friend-the-dolphin and tried to find thirty-forty minutes every morning or evening for it. She could not afford more than this.