"Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Mitchell)

KINGDOM RIVER
BOOK TWO OF THE SNOWFALL TRILOGY
By
MITCHELL SMITH

Version 1.0
Copyright © 2003 by Mitchell Smith
ISBN: 0-765-34058-5

Concern has been expressed by the National Science Foundation that possible alterations of
Jupiter's orbit, following successive major cometary impacts, may affect the earth's orbit —
slightly, but still decisively — and so change the annual patterns of our planetary weather.
Associated Press, May 16, 2006
Article in Bloomington Times-Tribune
Bloomington, Indiana, May 17, 2006

Had this latest — -and most severe — ice-age taken an age to arrive, instead of only
decades, enough preparation might have been possible to spare those hundreds of millions who
froze in the north... those hundreds of millions who starved in the south. Might have spared us, as
well, four — now almost five — barbaric centuries, with what remains of civilization learned, like
our language, from those relatively few books surviving.
New Harvard Yard, Cambridge,
Massachusetts. Commentaries


Introduction
To the Kipchak Prince and Khan Evgeny Toghrul, Lord of Grass, Ruler Perfect of the Bering Strait
Traversed, the Map-Pacific Coast, Map-California — and, lately, Conqueror of Map-Texas to the
Guadalupe River and beyond.
Greetings from Neckless Peter, old man and librarian, who years ago, having been taken captive
from my Gardens Town by naked savages — Border Roamers serving with your father's subsidiary
forces — was privileged to tutor a brilliant boy in what we know of Warm-times gone, and their
wisdom.
This boy has become you, my lord — and I, your recently assigned ambassador and agent to
North Map-Mexico, take this opportunity to tell you that I quit.
'I quit.' Is it any wonder we get not only our written and spoken language from the books of
centuries past, but even its casual slang — so neat, so pointed, so appropriate?
I am, of course, aware that your strangler's bowstring awaits any who disappoint you, and can only
hope that a thousand miles of distance — and perhaps some slight regard you might still hold for your
elderly tutor — will prevent a determined attempt at murder.
In any case, I can now say what I felt it unwise to mention to you before — so as not to increase
an already understandable arrogance — which is that you were by far the most extraordinary
intelligence I had ever encountered or ever expected to encounter, and as such were a joy to teach. I
have not forgotten and will never forget sitting by the Meadow Fountain at Caravanserai with a quiet,
slender boy whose eyes, black, glossy, steady as a spider's and slightly slanted beneath the folds of their
lids, drank from the pages of every copybook I presented to him.
Your first question to me: What had happened to the countless thousands of Warm-time books now
lost to us? You'd asked, and been saddened by my answer: "Burned, libraries of them, almost all those
not eaten by centuries of winters. Burned with all knowledge of their miracles of learning — perfect
medicines, the making of black bang-powder, the secrets of flying machines and laboring machines and