"Robert Reed - Good Mountain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

When Jopale was a young boy, disaster struck. The trade winds strengthened
abruptly, and in a single year the Continent drifted west almost one thousand kilometer
Cities and entire homelands were plunged into darkness. Millions of free citizens saw
crops die and their homelands starve. The only rational response was to move away, l
as immigrants on other lands, or as refugees, or in a few casesтАФlike Port of
KraussтАФremaining where they were, in the darkness, making the very best of the trage

To a young boy, the disaster seemed like enormous good fun. There was excite
in the air, a delicious sense of danger walking on the world. Strange new children arrive
with their peculiar families, living in tiny homes given to them by charities and charitable
guilds. Jopale got to know a few of those people, at least well enough to hear their sto
about endless night and the flickering of nameless stars. But he still couldnтАЩt appreciat
fact that his own life was precarious now. Jopale was a bright child, but conventional. A
had a conventional family who promised him that the trade winds would soon weaken a
the Continent would push its way back to its natural location. What was dead now woul
again, those trusted voices argued. The dark lands would grow again. And because he
young and naturally optimistic, Jopale convinced himself that he would live to enjoy tha
glorious rebirth.

But the boy grew into a rather less optimistic young man, and the young man bec
a respectable and ordinary teacher of literature. During the average cycle, between on
quiet sleep and the next, Jopale wouldnтАЩt once imagine that anything important about h
world could ever change.

He was in his house, sleeping unaware, when a moderate quake split the land
beneath him.

Early-warning sensors recorded the event, and Jopale happened to read about t
quake in the morning newsbook. But no expert mentioned any special danger. The
Continent was always shifting and cracking. Drowned islands would shatter, and bubbl
compressed gas were constantly pushing toward the surface. There was no compellin
reason for worry, and so he ate his normal first-meal and rode his two-wheel over the r
to workтАФa small landownersтАЩ school set on softer, paler ground just beyond his
homelandтАФand there he taught the classics to his indifferent students, sat through a lo
department meeting, and then returned home again. Alone in his quiet house, he ate h
last-meal and read until drowsy, and then he slipped his sleep-hood over his head and
curled up in bed.

His house was small and relatively new, set in a corner of his parentsтАЩ original far
JopaleтАЩs property was part of a long prosperous valley. But since he was no farmer, he
rented most of the ground to neighbors who raised crops and kept four-footsтАФmilking
varieties that were made into stew meat and bone meal once they grew old. The neigh
also kept scramblers for their sweet meat, and they used teams of mockmen to work t
land and its animals, lending every waking moment a busy, industrious quality.

Jopale rose with the next cycle and went to work, as he did with the cycle after th
and the cycles that followed.

His homeland was blackish-green beneath its transparent cuticle of hard wax. Th