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.īut 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.Īll 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 by david brin