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Автор Ian Tregillis
BITTER SEEDS
Ian Tregillis
To Zoe, with love
Acknowledgments
I am deeply indebted to my friends, colleagues, and mentors in the New Mexico Critical Mass Workshop: Daniel Abraham, Terry England, Ty Franck, Emily Mah, George R. R. Martin, Vic Milan, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Jan Stirling, S. M. Stirling, Sage Walker, and Walter Jon Williams. Without their passion for this project, I would never have attempted it; without their support, wisdom, and good humor, I could never have finished it. The weaknesses herein are mine and mine alone, but the good bits belong to Critical Mass.
I am likewise grateful to my companions at the 2007 Blue Heaven workshop for their excellent feedback on portions of this novel: Paolo Bacigalupi, Tobias Buckell, Rae Dawn Carson, Charles Coleman Finlay, Sandra McDonald, Holly McDowell, Paul Melko, Sarah Prineas, Heather Shaw, Bill Shunn, and Greg van Eekhout.
Thanks also to Mike Bateman for his peerless mastery of the whiteboard; Mark Falzini for sharing his wonderful collection of research materials from the Imperial War Museum; Char Peery, Ph. D. , for critical reading and the lore of weird linguistic experiments in antiquity; Robert Bodor, Sam Butler, Brad Beaulieu, and Toby Messinger for critical reading; and B. K. Dunn for patient advice on German.
My agent, the fabulous Kay McCauley, has supported my efforts with zeal and confidence from the very beginning. Thank you, Kay, for believing in me and believing in this tale.
I'd also like to thank my editor, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, for his enthusiasm for this novel, and for making it far better than it would have been otherwise.
Zoe Vaughter knew I'd become a writer long before I did. She's the best cheerleader anybody could wish for, and better than I deserve. I'll never be able to thank her properly for her unwavering faith, support, and patience over the years. Mere words will never be enough.
Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you.
There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet.
Behold: I give you the Overman.
Prologue
Murder on the wind: crows and ravens wheeled beneath a heavy sky, like spots of ink splashed across a leaden canvas. They soared over leafless forests, crumbling villages, abandoned fields of barleycorn and wheat. The fields had gone to seed; village chimneys stood dormant and cold. There would be no waste here, no food free for the taking.
And so the ravens moved on.
For years they had watched armies surge across the continent with the ebb and flow of war, waltzing to the music of empire. They had dined on the detritus of warfare, feasted on the warriors themselves. But now the dance was over, the trenches empty, the bones picked clean.
