"Sterling E. Lanier - Hieros 01 - Hiero's Journey" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lanier Sterling E)

Republic, which claimed him as a citizen, was a sprawling area of indefinite
boundaries, roughly comprising ancient Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Alberta, as
well as parts of the old Northwest Territories. There were so few people in
comparison to the land area that territorial boundaries were somewhat
meaningless in the old sense of the word. They tended to be ethnic or even
religious, rather than national.
The Taig, the vast boreal forest of conifers which had spread across the
northern world at least a million years before The Death, still dominated the
North. It was changed, however, with many species of warm country plants
intermingled-with the great pines. Some plant species had died, vanished
entirely, as had some animals also, but most had survived, and adapted to the
warmer clirsate. Winters were now fairly mild in the West of Kanda, with the
temperature seldom ever getting below five degrees centigrade. The polar caps
had shrunk and the earth was once again in another deep interglacial period.
What had caused the change to be so drastic, man or nature, was a
6 HIERO'S JOURNEY
debated point in the Abbey classrooms. The Greenhouse Effect and its results
were still preserved in the old records, but too much empiric data was lacking
to be certain. Scientists, both Abbey and laymen, however, never stopped
searching for more data on the lost ages in an effort to help shape the
future. The terror of the ancient past was one thing which had never been
lost, despite almost five thousand years. That The Death must never be allowed
to come again was the basic reason for all scientific training. On this,
except for outlaws and the Unclean, all men were agreed. As a good scientist
and Abbey scholar, Hiero continually reflected on the problems of the past,
even as now, while seeming to daydream in the saddle.
He made an effective picture as he slowly rode along, and not being without
vanity, was aware of it. He was a stocky young man, clean-shaven but for a
mustache, with the straight black hair, copper skin, and hooked nose of a good
Metz. He was moderately proud of his pure descent, for he could tell off
thirty generations of his family without a break. It had come as a profound
shock in the Abbey school when the Father Abbot had gently pointed out that he
and all other true Metz, including the abbot himself, were descended from the
Metis, The French Canadian-Indian half-breeds of the remote past, a
poverty-stricken minority whose remoteness and isolation from city life had
helped save a disproportionate number of them from The Death. Once this had
been made clear to him, Hiero and his classmates never again boasted of their
birth. The egalitarian rule of the Abbeys, based solely on merit, became a new
source of pride instead.
On Hiero's back was strapped his great knife, a thing like a short, massive
sword, with a straight, heavy back, a sharp point, a fourteen-inch rounded
blade, and only one edge. It was very old, this object from before The Death,
and a prize won by Hiero for scholastic excellence. On its blade were incised,
in worn letters and numbers, "U.S." and "1917" and ''Plumb. Phila.," with a
picture of a thing like an onion with leaves attached. Hiero knew it was
incredibly ancient and that it had once belonged to men of the United States,
which had long ago been a great empire of the South. Th$ was all he or perhaps
anyone could know of the old Marine Corps bolo, made for a long-lost campaign
in Central America, forgotten
THE SIGN OF THE FISHHOOK 7