"Baxter, Stephen - Huddle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baxter Stephen)

It got colder, fiercely so.

As the ice holes began to freeze over, the people emerged reluctantly from the
water, standing on the hardening ice.

In a freezing hole, a slush of ice crystal clumps would gather. His mother
called that frazil. Then, when the slush had condensed to form a solid surface,
it took on a dull matte appearance -- grease ice. The waves beneath the larger
holes made the grease ice gather in wide, flat pancakes, with here and there
stray, protruding crystals, called congelation. At last, the new ice grew harder
and compressed with groans and cracks, into pack ice.

There were lots of words for ice.

And after the holes were frozen over the water -- and their only food supply --
was cut off, for six months.

When the blizzards came, the huddle began.

The adults and children -- some of them little fat balls of fur barely able to
walk -- came together, bodies pressed close, enveloping Night-Dawn in a welcome
warmth, the shallow swell of their breathing pressing against him.

The snow, flecked with ice splinters, came at them horizontally. Night-Dawn
tucked his head as deep as he could into the press of bodies, keeping his eyes
squeezed closed.

Night fell. Day returned. He slept, in patches, standing up.

Sometimes he could hear people talking. But then the wind rose to a scream,
drowning human voices.

The days wore away, still shortening, as dark as the nights.

The group shifted, subtly. People were moving around him. He got colder.
Suddenly somebody moved away, a fat man, and Night-Dawn found himself exposed to
the wind. The cold cut into him, shocking him awake.

He tried to push back into the mass of bodies, to regain the warmth.

The disturbance spread like a ripple through the group. He saw heads raised,
eyes crusted with sleep and snow. With the group's tightness broken, a mass of
hot air rose from the compressed bodies, steaming, frosting, bright in the
double-shadowed Moonlight.

Here was No-Sun, blocking his way. "Stay out there. You have to take your turn."

"But it's cold."

She turned away.