The Chromosome Game by Hodder-Williams Christopher

Author:Hodder-Williams, Christopher [Hodder-Williams, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Venture Press
Published: 2016-01-07T18:30:00+00:00

Minus Five

For all the world it looks as if the super-swallow and the Atlantic gull are in conference. There are reasons for this.

The drought is now a grim reality which threatens the very lives of the creatures on whom it has brought such misery.

Usually an extravaganza of wild foliage and massive pines, the landscape that flanks the newly-encroaching sea is bleached dry. A mixture of angry brown and a peculiar milk-white, the territory that was formerly pasture land has soured into infertility. The fresh-water pools have evaporated, leaving an embossed watermark at each rim and showing great gashes beneath, where the parched earth has crumbled and dilated, then set into crusted, brittle ruts.

The swallow, as if to demonstrate some of the problems threatening survival, executes a test flight for the benefit of the gull, around the broken towers of the old chateau. No doubt the gull can appreciate what is wrong; feathers, normally lubricated and greased by body health, are jagged and uneven, warping in the sun and rendering the swallow prone to deep stall. The swallow, unable to conduct a properly-coordinated steep turn without coming within an ace of an incipient spin, lands, clumsily though without injury, back on the ancient chimney piece.

While these two seasoned aviators go into a huddle about the aerodynamic problems brought about by the unrelenting heatwave, so the new horses, proverbially lively and loving, are clearly irritable and ill. There is practically no grazing; and, except way up in the hills, where there is still a dwindling source of irrigation from the streams originating in the Alps beyond, the horses have their work cut out finding something to drink. Those that no longer have the strength to make the trek so far inland find themselves locked in a watershed; and the stallions fight each other for what remains. The mares look on, terrified for their foals. How can the weakened youngsters be herded so far from their customary grazing? Some of these lie dead already, rotting in the agonising heat. More will follow.

Where, asks the despairing animal community, are the rains? … Wild wheat, much mutated but still recognisable as vital gram for the whole gamut ranging from the rabbit to the ram, sags in the sunlight. The stalks are like matchwood. As the hot winds blow in from the south, the corn, instead of flexing obligingly in the gusts, snaps off into broken spikes and is blown into the seas that foment so angrily around Kasiga’s hull. High above this, the tattered vultures eat off the stinking bodies of the ponies, leaving the worst of the meat to the eager insects which revel in spreading disease.

Even the monkeys, normally chatty and active when the menu is far from perfect, find themselves marooned in barren trees where the nuts lack the oil they know to be so succulently rich in vitamins. Though they live on, these beasts have less and less to say to each other. Although they remember in their genetics that Africa

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.