"Kate Wilhelm - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

unanswerable questions to David, who stared at him with nothing at all to say.
тАЬAnd they donтАЩt know what to do about any of it,тАЭ his grandfather went on. тАЬNo more than the
dinosaurs knew how to stop their own extinction. WeтАЩve changed the photochemical reactions of our
own atmosphere, and we canтАЩt adapt to the new radiations fast enough to survive! There have been
hints here and there that this is a major concern, but who listens? The damn fools will lay each
and every catastrophe at the foot of a local condition and turn their backs on the fact that this
is global, until itтАЩs too late to do anything.тАЭ
тАЬBut if itтАЩs what you think, what could they do?тАЭ David asked, looking to Dr. Walt for
support and finding none.
тАЬTurn off the factories, ground the airplanes, stop the mining, junk the cars. But they
wonтАЩt, and even if they did, it would still be a catastrophe. ItтАЩs going to break wide open.
Within the next couple of years, David, itтАЩs going to break.тАЭ He drank his eggnog then and put the
crystal cup down hard. David jumped at the noise.
тАЬThereтАЩs going to be the biggest bust since man began scratching marks on rocks, thatтАЩs
what! And weтАЩre getting ready for it! IтАЩm getting ready for it! WeтАЩve got the land and weтАЩve got
the men to farm it, and weтАЩll get our hospital and weтАЩll do research in ways to keep our animals
and our people alive, and when the world goes into a tailspin weтАЩll be alive and when it starves
weтАЩll be eating.тАЭ
Suddenly he stopped and studied David with his eyes narrowed. тАЬI said youтАЩd leave here
convinced that weтАЩve all gone mad. But youтАЩll be back, David, my boy. YouтАЩll be back before the
dogwoods bloom, because youтАЩll see the signs.тАЭ
David returned to school and his thesis and the donkey work that Selnick gave him to do.
Celia didnтАЩt write, and he had no address for her. In response to his questions his mother
admitted that no one had heard from her. In February in retaliation for the food embargo, Japan
passed trade restrictions that made further United States trade with her impossible. Japan and
China signed a mutual aid treaty. In March, Japan seized the Philippines, with their fields of
rice, and China resumed its long-dormant trusteeship over the Indochina peninsula, with the rice
paddies of Cambodia and Vietnam.


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Cholera struck in Rome, Los Angeles, Galveston, and Savannah. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Jordan,
and other Arab-bloc nations issued an ultimatum: the United States must guarantee a yearly ration
of wheat to the Arab bloc and discontinue all aid to the state of Israel or there would be no oil
for the United States or Europe. They refused to believe the United States could not meet their
demands. International travel restrictions were imposed immediately, and the government, by
presidential decree, formed a new department with cabinet status: the Bureau of Information.


The redbuds were hazy blurs of pink against the clear, May-softened sky when David returned
home. He stopped by his house only long enough to change his clothes and get rid of his boxes of
college mementos before he drove out to the Sumner farm, where Walt was staying while he oversaw
the construction of his hospital.
Walt had an office downstairs. It was a clutter of books, notebooks, blueprints,
correspondence. He greeted David as if he hadnтАЩt been away at all. тАЬLook,тАЭ he said. тАЬThis research
of Semple and Frerrer, what do you know about it? The first generation of cloned mice showed no
deviation, no variation in viability or potency, nor did the second or third, but with the fourth
the viability decreased sharply. And there was a steady, and irreversible, slide to extinction.