Аннотация
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle
The Burning City
For Roberta and Marilyn
"It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us."
From Watchmen by Alan Moore
PREFACE
There was fire on Earth before the fire god came. There has always been fire. What Yangin-Atep gave to humankind was madness. Yangin-Atep's children will play with fire even after they burn their fingers.
It was only Yangin-Atep's joke, then and for unmeasured time after. But a greater god called down the great cold, and Yangin-Atep's joke came into its own. In the icy north people could not survive unless the fire god favored one of their number.
Cautious men and women never burned themselves twice; but their people died of the cold. Someone must tend the fire during the terrible winters. Twelve thousand years before the birth of Christ, when most of the gods had gone mythical and magic was fading from the ...
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