"S. M. Stirling - Sea of Time 02 - Against the Tide of Years" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

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Against the Tide of Years
by S.M. Stirling
To Marjorie Totterdale Stirling, 1920-1997. Ave Atque Vale.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Lyrics from "Fogarty's Cove" used by permission of Ariel
Rogers/Fogarty's Cove Music, copyright 1976, written by Stan
Rogers.

My thanks again to the people of Nantucket (individuals too
numerous to name), to the U.S. Coast Guard, and to the
historians, linguists, and archaeologists.

Thanks also to Suzanne Feldman and Anne-Marie Talbott for
their help, and to Lawrence H. Feldman, Ph.D. (anthropology)
and M.L.S., for helpтАФand help with the beer.
PROLOGUE
Since the Event, everything has changed. We've had to just
accept itтАФthose who didn't go into shock and never come
outтАФlike time itself, a mystery we'd never solve. Many couldn't
accept it, and I think that accounts for a lot of the craziness that
bubbled up in the first year or two. On top of it all, William
Walker headed off to England with his band of thugs, to set
himself up as a king, and we had to fight a war to stop him. If
he'd stayed up in the twentieth, maybe Walker would never have
been more than a mildly amoral officer in the Coast Guard
instead of a warlord and emperor, and his bitch-queen Hong
would certainly never have had the opportunity to rival Elizabeth
Bathory and Giles de Rais in the atrocity league.
 God knows, I like to think the rest of us have improved on the
original history a bit, where we couldтАФspreading potatoes and
sanitation, putting down human sacrifice and slavery. Mind you,
there are still times when I wake up and expect to hear radios
and cars! Now we've had a few years of comparative peace, and
things are looking up. For now. What really worries me is that
we couldn't finish Walker off.

From the personal journals of Founding Councilor Ian
Arnstein, as quoted in David Arnstein, An Introductory History
of the Republic of Nantucket.

Ch. 4, the Crisis of the Second Decade