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

rough walls of the valley were covered with parasites and epiphytes that sprang from
crevices and wormholes. There were even a few wild animals, though not as many as
he was a boy. With each passing year, people were more common, the forests more
carefully tended, and like every inhabited part in the world, his home was becoming
domesticated, efficient and ordinary.

For twenty cycles, Jopale went about his life without worry, unaware that the first
quake was followed by a series of little eventsтАФrumbles and slow, undetectable shifts
let gas and black seawater intrude into the gap between his one-time island and the bu
coastline. Nobody knew the danger; there was nobody to blame afterwards. Indeed, on
few dozen people were killed in the incident, which meant that it was barely noticed be
JopaleтАЩs horizon.

He woke early that last morning and slipped quietly from his house. A neighbor
woman was still sleeping in his bed. She had arrived at his doorstep at the end of the l
cycle, a little drunk and in the mood for sex. Jopale enjoyed her companionship, on
occasion, but he felt no obligation to be with her when she woke. ThatтАЩs why he dresse
hurry and rode off to school. Nobody knew that the seawater and its poisons had trave
close to the surface. But in the time it takes a loverтАЩs heart to beat twice, the pressurize
water found itself inside a sap well, nothing above but an open shaft and the sky.

The resulting geyser was a spectacle; every survivor said so. Presumably the
doomed were even more impressed, watching the tower of saltwater and foam soar h
overhead, dislodged chunks of wood falling around them, and an endless thunder sha
the world as huge quantities of gasтАФmethane laced with hydrogen sulfide -bubbled fr

Suffocation was the standard death, for people and everything else.

The entire valley was killed within minutes. But the high ridges trapped the poison
keeping the carnage contained. Even before Jopale heard the news, the disaster was
finished. By the time he rode home again, crews of mockmen dressed in diving suits h
capped the geyser. Engineers were busy drawing up plans for permanent repairs. And
was safe enough that a grieving survivor could walk to the ridge above, holding a perfu
rag against his face as he stared down at the fate of the world.

Water covered the valley floorтАФa stagnant gray lake already growing warm in the
brilliant sunlight. The forested slopes had either drowned or been bleached by the
suffocating gases. From his vantage point, Jopale couldnтАЩt see his house. But the land
beneath the sea was still aliveтАФstill a vibrant blackish-green. Pumps would have to be
up, and osmotic filters, and then everything else could be saved. But if the work happe
too slowly, too much salt would seep through the cuticle, causing the land to sicken an
Then the valley would become a single enormous sore, attacked by fungi and giant wo
nature was allowed its freedom, this tiny portion of the Continent would rot through, and
sea would come up again, spreading along the ancient fault lines, untold volumes of g
bubbling up into the rapidly sickening air.

People had to save the valley.

Why shouldnтАЩt they? A rational part of Jopale knew what was at stakeтАФwhat almo
every long-term prediction said was inevitable. But he couldnтАЩt shake his selfish need t