"Brennert, Alan - The Refuge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brennert Alan)

Tests quickly confirmed that the substance was, in fact, water--but a new kind
of water. The bacteria had apparently polymerized the sea water, altering its
molecular structure, creating a fourth state of water: not liquid, solid, or
gaseous, but something inbetween. Its properties were similar to conventional
water -- but significantly different in one respect:

Whereas normal water froze at thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit, polymerized water
"froze" -- that is to say, solidified -- at a relatively balmy fifty degrees.
And it didn't "thaw out" -- that is, revert to its gelatinous state -until the
water temperature hit sixty.

Inside of three days, there were massive "ice" floes in the Strait of Magellan.
Within a week, the bacteria had spread beyond the Strait into the Atlantic;
within two weeks, the Brazil Current had carried it into the Gulf Stream, and
from the Gulf Stream it drifted into the North Atlantic Current. Every drop of
water it touched turned into polywater, as it became known, and unless the
oceans and rivers were very warm, the polywater promptly "froze."

It was summer, and in the tropics it was warm enough for the polywater not to
freeze. Even warm enough, in places, that the polywater turned into its gaseous
state, carrying the ancient bacteria aloft on trade winds, into the Jet Stream,
and over land -- where it found its way to landlocked lakes, rivers, reservoirs.
Within six months, half the Earth's oceans, and virtually every source of fresh
water in North America, Europe, and Asia, had all had been polymerized.

Of course, it wasn't really "ice" in the conventional sense -- at fifty degrees,
it was warm ice at best. And as damaging as the transformation was to the
ecosphere, it was not a catastrophe. Yet.

Clouds, "seeded" by the bacteria, turned to "ice" crystals. Snow-- "hot snow,"
the media called it -- began falling over most of the world, carpeting both land
and solidified oceans with a thick dusting of white, "hot" snow.

Snow which only melted in warmer climates. Snow which, in unprecedented
quantities, reflected the sun's light and heat back into space -raising the
earth's albedo from thirty percent to over seventy percent. And with no easy way
for humanity to melt more than a fraction of the snow, the world plunged into a
new Ice Age.

Over the next several years, temperatures dropped, globally, over thirty
degrees. Power plants shut down; crops failed; those who didn't die of exposure,
died from hunger.

A long, endless winter. "The Earth," Valle said soberly, "would never see
another spring."

Ray listened to Valle's story with a mix of horror and disbelief. The two men
stood in the Refuge's conservatory, an elegantly furnished room the size of a
softball field, with high vaulted ceilings and enormous bay windows overlooking