The Postman
by David Brin
PRELUDE
THE THIRTEEN-YEAR THAW
Chill winds still blew. Dusty snow fell. But the ancient sea was in no hurry.
The Earth had spun six thousand times since flames blossomed and cities died. Now, after sixteen circuits of the Sun, plumes of soot no longer roiled from burning forests, turning day into night.
Six thousand sunsets had come and gone — gaudy, orange, glorious with suspended dust — ever since towering, superheated funnels had punched through to the stratosphere, fitting it with tiny bits of suspended rock and soil. The darkened atmosphere passed less sunlight — and it cooled.
It hardly mattered anymore what had done it — a giant meteorite, a huge volcano, or a nuclear war. Temperatures and pressures swung out of balance, and great winds blew.
All over the north, a dingy snow fell, and in places even summer did not erase it.
Only the Ocean, timeless and obstinate, resistant to change, really mattered. Dark skies had come and gone. The winds pushed ocher, growling sunsets. In places, the ice grew, and the shallower seas began to sink.
But the Ocean’s vote was all important, and it was not in yet.
The Earth turned. Men still struggled, here and there.
And the Ocean breathed a sigh of winter.
I. THE CASCADES
1
In dust and blood — with the sharp tang of terror stark in his nostrils — a man’s mind will sometimes pull forth odd relevancies. 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.
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. 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. Words on a page.