Stone spring (Stephen Baxter) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги

FOUR
58

The years passed, and the world followed its ancient cycles, seasons succeeding each other like intakes of breath.

For Northland, there was no repeat of the calamity of the Great Sea – not yet anyhow. But the ocean rose steadily, fuelled by melting ice and the very expansion of its own water mass in a warming clime. It bit away relentlessly at the surviving land and there were surges when it was assisted by storms or landslips. Before the sea’s advance anything living on the land had to retreat, if it could, or die. Humans too, their lives brief compared to the sea’s long contemplations, had to make way for the water.

That, at least, was how it used to be. Now the northern coast of Northland was acquiring a kind of crust, of works that defied the sea’s advances.

And the humans who lived there, though as always they grew and aged and died to be replaced by new generations, weren’t going anywhere.