A narrow cleft split the brush and overlooked a slope of tumbled rock. But in this awful, bone-dry jungle, there was nothing to do but crawl onward and pray his twisting path did not deliver him back to his enemies - to those who had effectively killed him already.ДЇinally, when he had come to think the hellish growth would never end, an opening appeared ahead. Now, Gordon was reduced to not much more than a ripped shirt, faded jeans, and camp moccasins - and the thorns were cutting them all to bits.ДЄ tapestry of fiery pain followed each new scratch down his arms and back. Minutes ago he had been as comfortable and well-stocked as any solitary traveler could hope to be, these days. It was slow, painful progress, and he wasn't even sure where he was headed. Scratched and torn from his desperate escape into this dense thicket, he crawled as quietly as he could, stopping to lay still and squeeze his eyes shut whenever the floating dust seemed about to make him sneeze. He wondered what pollyannaish glow the fellow might find around this catastrophe.

Gordon wished the long-dead writer were here right now, sharing his predicament. 'Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a desperate man.' There is never a disaster so devastating that a determined person cannot pull something out of the ashes - by risking all that he or she has left. 'Short of Death itself, there is no such thing as a 'total' defeat. And although he couldn't recall the obscure author's name, the words came back with utter clarity. It was a memory of contrast - of a rainy afternoon in a warm, safe university library, long ago - of a lost world filled with books and music and carefree philosophical ramblings.Дragging his body through the tough, unyielding bracken, he could almost see the letters, black against white. Panting under a bone-dry thicket - crawling desperately to find a refuge - he suddenly experienced a recollection as clear as the dusty stones under his nose. After half a lifetime in the wilderness, most of it spent struggling to survive, it still struck Gordon as odd - how obscure memories would pop into his mind right in the middle of a life-or-death fight. In dust and blood - with the sharp tang of terror stark in his nostrils - a man's mind will sometimes pull forth odd relevancies. In places, the ice grew, and the shallower seas began to sink.Д«ut the Ocean's vote was all important, and it was not in yet. The winds pushed ocher, growling sunsets.

Only the Ocean, timeless and obstinate, resistant to change, really mattered. Temperatures and pressures swung out of balance, and great winds blew.ДЄll over the north, a dingy snow fell, and in places even summer did not erase it. It hardly mattered anymore what had done it - a giant meteorite, a huge volcano, or a nuclear war. The darkened atmosphere passed less sunlight - and it cooled. Six thousand sunsets had come and gone - gaudy, orange, glorious with suspended dust - ever since towering, superheated funnels had punched through to the stratosphere, filling it with tiny bits of suspended rock and soil.

Now, after sixteen circuits of the Sun, plumes of soot no longer roiled from burning forests, turning day into night.

The Earth had spun six thousand times since flames blossomed and cities died.

The postman david brin