"Ken Macleod - Fall Revolution 3 - The Cassini Division" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

hazy with woodsmoke. The trees were interrupted here and there by towers whose steel and
concrete had survived two centuries of neglect, and by broad corridors around ancient roadways.
To the east the Lee Water broadened out to the Hackney marshes and the distant gleam of the
Thames. On the nearby hills to the west the ruins of the old brick buildings and streets were still,
barely, visible as crumbling walls and cracked slabs among the trees.
It was a common misconception one which, to be honest, none of us had ever found it politic to
publicly correct, though the facts were there for anyone who cared to look that the Green Death was
a single plague, the result of a virus genetically engineered by some Green faction in a fit of
Malthusian overkill. More sober epidemiology has revealed that it was several diseases, probably
natural, all of which hit at the same time and which were spread by soldiers, refugees and settlers.
The disorder, and the weakening of the social immune-systems of medicine and science, were
indeed partly the responsibility of the Green gangs and their many allies and precursors, going back
through a century or more of irrationalism and anti-humanism. Indeed, the panicky abandonment
of the cities as plague-centres was itself, in part, the outcome of that way of thinking, and it
probably led to more deaths than the diseases ever did. So, while the Greens werenтАЩt quite as
responsible as folk once thought for the billions of deaths, I find it hard to reproach anyone for the
so-called тАЬexcessesтАЭ after the liberation. (The execution figures were inflated by over-enthusiastic
local committees, anyway. It wasnтАЩt more than a hundred thousand, worldwide. Tops. Honestly.)
The long-term effect of the Green Death wasnтАЩt on the size of the population which bounced back
sharply after the social revolution, and was now coming along very nicely, thank you but on its
distribution. Most of the old metropoles remained empty, long after they became perfectly safe to
live in. They were happily left, quite appropriately, to those who rejected the new society and
preferred some version of the old.
The countryside, too, was reverting to the wild, as agriculture was replaced by aquaculture,
hydroponics, and artificial photosynthesis. It was less frequently ceded to the non-cos than the old
cities, however, because of its recreational value to people from the dense arcologies of the Union.
Alexandra Port itself had changed little, because it had never been abandoned to the ravages of
nature or man. In the Green Death it had been a conduit for refugees going out and relief flowing
in, and even in the WestтАЩs century of collapse it had been maintained by the earthbound remnant of
the Space Movement, its boundaries guarded, its personnel supplied from outside, a garrison in the
midst of desolation.
It was all just like in the old pictures, I thought as we descended to the concourse: the PeopleтАЩs
Palace, retro-styled even when it was new, back in the twentieth century, and the newer, twenty-
first century terminal buildings and workshops sprawling across the crown of the hill under the
high pylons. The only evidence of modern technology I could see was the escalator down which
we rode and its continuation in the walkway which carried us to the exit. Their seamless flow of
plastic not nanotech, just clever would have baffled the complexтАЩs early engineers.
We walked over to the PeopleтАЩs Palace, now a guesthouse as well as a home for the people
working in the port. I looked at the sun, and at my watch.
тАЬShall we stay here for the night?тАЭ I suggested. тАЬGo on our travels in the morning?тАЭ
Suze nodded. тАЬYeah, itтАЩs too late to go travelling,тАЭ she said. тАЬI do know some places to sleep in
London, but theyтАЩre strictly something you do for the experience.тАЭ We checked at the board in the
foyer and found there were plenty of vacancies; most of our fellow tourists apparently preferred the
dubious glamour and adventure of finding accommodation in one of LondonтАЩs native inns or
shooting lodges. We selected a double room in the west wing, and took our stuff up. There was a
small stove, coffee, and other supplies in the room, and an invitation to the evening meal and/or
later social activities. While Suze was showering, I asked the suit to make an unobtrusive sweep of
the room. It found nothing, apart from the expected wildlife and the standard cleany-crawlies.
There were definitely none of the other kind of bugs not that I seriously expected any, but it was
routine, like the airship inspection.