Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Prologue
- 2046
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- About the Author
‘Hmmm,’ Harry grumbles, giving her a thoughtful glance before walking on a few steps then stopping again. ‘What?’ he asks her.
‘Northern hemisphere,’ she says with a smile. ‘Moss grows on the north in the northern hemisphere and it’s not always accurate.’
‘I don’t think that’s right either,’ Ben calls forward. ‘I read it somewhere that it’s got something to do with moisture and the sun?’
‘That’s north,’ Harry says, pointing again.
‘Okay, Mountain Man,’ Safa says. ‘Lead on.’
They carry on ascending to the top of the bank and come to a stop again at the sudden view opening out. A clearing several hundred metres wide and long bordered by a fluctuating treeline that bulges out in places but recedes in others. It’s just like the valley floor too, with swampy patches of gloopy-looking water here and there and big boulders, rocks and stones littered between the horsetails and fern grasses.
‘Look at those.’ Safa points down to a group of plants that look like tropical houseplants of the type you’d expect to see in Mediterranean hotel foyers. Long, spiky-looking branches that are actually soft to the touch and bushy too, with leaves and stems of almost perfectly identical length and size. In the middle there are weird seed fruit things that look like pine cones with overlapping Roman armour except they look softer and even edible.
‘Flowers,’ Harry says, giving voice to the things he sees. They look round, spotting flashes of colour amidst the sea of greens and browns. Whites, reds and all manner of shades in-between. Yellows and purples of things that look like roses and sunflowers and magnolias but clearly are not any of those things. They have cup shapes with petals fanning round to entice insects to pollinate and feast. Some are tubular like trumpets, others are more straight or like the rose formation of concentric circles of petals growing tight together.
They get that jarring sensation again. Safa looks at a broad-headed flowering plant, with her brain trying to interpret the sight as a sunflower. But it isn’t a sunflower. She doesn’t know what it is. Ben doesn’t recognise any of the flowers either, but he can see evolution in action. That thing will become a sunflower. That will be a rose, but not yet, and not for millions of years either.
The static vision is one thing, but the smells, sounds and feel of the place are an altogether different set of sensations. The heat is close, like a jungle, and the air is filled with thousands of noises of insects buzzing and chirping and other creatures squawking and crying out.