"da Cruz, Daniel - Republic of Texas 02 - Texas on the Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

"Frightful squared. Forty cubic miles of stratospheric dust. Ten years to settle. Solar radiation reduced in high latitudes by order of magnitude. Cooler ocean surfaces, less evaporation. Less evaporation, fewer clouds. Fewer clouds, less rainfall. Rivers and streams dry up. Meanwhile, less sunlight, reduced photosynthesis, less plant life. Synergism of reduced sunlight and reduced rainfall-- catastrophic for food supply."

"Are you telling this committee, Professor," said Castle, the implications of his words sinking in, "that we're facing an imminent worldwide food shortage?"

"Yes."

"Many will starve?"

"Yes."

"Millions?"

"Billions."

"But surely something can be done."

"Yes. Vastly increase water supply. Compensate for diminished rainfall. Only way to go."

"But that's impossible. You heard the past four weeks of testimony, didn't you, Professor?"

"Every word."

"Then you'll agree there just isn't any practicable way to increase the water supply."

"Not just no practical way--no way at all."



7. TURNBULL
11 FEBRUARY 2005



"BUT I'M TELLING YOU, MR. PRESIDENT, THE SON OF A bitch is killing us."

"Now, now, Pat," said Horatio Francis Turnbull soothingly, "don't panic. It's forty-five months to election day. Castle will ran out of gas long before then."

Pat Benson, the President's national affairs adviser, shook his head glumly. "I wish I could believe that, Mr. President. I've been out in the hustings these past ten days, and never in thirty-eight years of taking the public's pulse have I witnessed such honest-to-God hysteria."

"Relax, Pat. You'll think of something. You always do."

The President tilted back in his tall leather chair and put his feet on the desk. He lit a nine-inch Emperador and silently commended his sagacity in repealing the embargo on Cuban tobacco. He was content. How many men could put their feet on a desk once owned by Abraham Lincoln, enjoy an unlimited supply of the world's best hand-rolled cigars, and have the fate of the nation in the palm of their hand--not to mention the undivided attention of a man like Dr. Sidney Bussek, lately the eminent chancellor of the University of Southern California, silently awaiting an invitation to speak?

President Turnball turned to his scientific adviser and smiled. "How about it, Sid--don't you think Pat is getting his bowels in an uproar over nothing?"

"On the contrary." Sidney Bussek was a tall man clad in black who looked rather like a professional mourner. "Congressman Castle is scaring the public witless. He tells them that the population bomb is about to blow up our water supply and implies that this crime must be laid at the door of the last four or five Republican administrations. He trumpets the dangers to our rivers of raw

sewage and industrial toxins and thermal pollution. He piles statistic on statistic--how it takes fifteen thousand gallons of water to irrigate the land to grow a bushel of wheat, four thousand gallons to produce a brace of chicken eggs for breakfast, and so on and so forth. But before scientific commentators can put into perspective those scare headlines Castle produces day after day, he hits us with new ones. I agree with Ben: The man's a menace. If we don't do something soon, he could be real trouble."