Hardisty The Descent

The shocking, visionary climate-emergency thriller - prequel to the critically acclaimed THE FORCING
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-916788-04-6
Verlag: Orenda Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 300 Seiten

A young man and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet to uncover the origin of the events that set the world on its course to disaster ... The prescient, deeply shocking prequel to the bestselling, critically acclaimed Climate Emergency thriller, The Forcing. `Paul Hardisty is a visionary´ Luke McCallin `A superbly handled tale of struggle and survival in a maimed world´ The Times `Paul Hardisty is a fine writer´ Lee Child ___________ Kweku Ashworth is a child of the cataclysm, born on a sailboat to parents fleeing the devastation in search for a refuge in the Southern Ocean. Growing up in a world forever changed, his only connection to the events that set the planet on its course to disaster were the stories his step-father, long-dead, recorded in his manuscript, The Forcing. But there are huge gaps in his stepfather's account, and when Kweku stumbles across a clandestine broadcast by someone close to the men who forced the globe into a climate catastrophe, he knows that it is time to find out for himself. Kweku and his young family set out on a perilous voyage across a devastated planet. What they find will challenge not only their faith in humanity, but their ability to stay alive. The devastating, nerve-shattering prequel to the critically acclaimed thriller The Forcing, a story of survival, hope, and the power of the human spirit in a world torn apart by climate change. ________ ***** `The cataclysmic climate-emergency thriller we all need to read ... this is where it all begins. My heart was in my mouth every second of the way´ Reader Review `Compelling, concerning and completely engrossing ... a book that demands your attention and your action. A must-read´ Jen Med's Book Reviews Praise for The Forcing `Provocative and insightful, visceral and terrifying´ SciFi Now `Announces Paul E. Hardisty as the true heir to John Christopher´ Tim Glister `A novel that might have actually predicted our future´ Ewan Morrison `The book I've been waiting and hoping for...´ Paul Waters `A riveting eco-thriller [that] paints a realistic picture of our future if society as a whole continues to ignore scientific warnings about global warming´ Crime Fiction Lover `Fierce, thoughtful, deeply humane and always compelling´ David Whish-Wilson

Canadian Paul E Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist. He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels), and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell, and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana'a. Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). The first four novels in his Claymore Straker series, The Abrupt Physics of Dying, The Evolution of Fear, Reconciliation for the Dead and Absolution all received great critical acclaim and The Abrupt Physics of Dying was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger and Telegraph Thriller of the Year. Paul is a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman, conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hardisty, Paul E.

Leseproben

Mother
Maybe it’s because of the message on the short-wave. Or maybe it’s the anniversary of Papa’s death that has dredged this all up again, this feeling, these half-formed memories. Whatever it is, I wake in the morning from the dream, the one I have been having for years now. It’s hard to explain, but it’s more than some random feeling, or a vague sense of displacement. There are big holes in my life. I know that now. I can feel them, as real as the heart beating inside me. I swim out to Providence, tied up on her mooring in our cove, and look through her log books, ranks of blue-bound hardcover volumes, the spines faded by decades of sun, the oldest frayed and worn, the ones yet to be used hard and crisp still, despite the years. They go all the way back to her original owner, Daniel Menzels – to before the Repudiation, to before Papa stole her, or whatever he called what he did. But that’s another story. Papa’s entries begin in July 2039, the day he and Mum and Derek Argent escaped from a religious cult leader and his followers on the Gulf Coast of the United States. The days from then are numbered sequentially from one until day 124, when the log book is full, the entries detailed and precise in Papa’s neat, legible hand. And then nothing again until a new log book starts six years later, as if nothing has changed. Papa’s chronology is missing exactly 2,190 days. Everything from the moment they left Belize until they arrived here. Our whole transit across the Pacific, along the south coast of Australia. And then the log restarts: our trips as a family along this coast, those Lewis and I took alone, the solo trips I did as Papa got older, all recorded in book after book. But all of that time – those first five years aboard Providence, my birth, Lewis’s – all of it gone. Later that afternoon, after a full day’s work with Lewis, cutting and hauling windfall from the forest behind the ridge, I walk down the hill and find Mum in her garden. I’ve been thinking about it all day, and I don’t even greet her. I just walk up to her and ask her. ‘What happened after you and Papa left Belize, Mum?’ She narrows her eyes, sets aside her hoe. ‘I know you were pregnant with me and that I was born on the boat. But other than that, you’ve told us almost nothing.’ I can still remember some of it, vague childhood memories of sitting at the bow, watching the dolphins ride the wave, the silver darts of flying fish springing from the water, the way the silver droplets dripped from their translucent wings. And then there are the dreams. And the nightmares. She looks surprised, stands brushing dirt from her hands. ‘What happened, Mum? Something is missing. Something’s always been missing. I’ve felt it for a long time.’ But she just frowns and waves this away. ‘Nothing to tell,’ she says, closing up the way she does more and more now. ‘What happened to the Providence log books, Mum?’ She looks at me quizzically. ‘They’re not there?’ ‘Yes, they are. But some are missing.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘I’m sure, Mum, I’ve just gone through them. Those first five years of my life, gone.’ She looks out towards Providence swinging on her mooring. ‘Maybe they’re somewhere else,’ she says. ‘Maybe Papa was using them to write his book and forgot to put them back.’ ‘Have you seen them?’ ‘No. No, I haven’t. Not for a long time.’ And that’s it. She doesn’t know. I scour her house, the bookshelves, ask Lewis, swim back out to Providence and check again, look through all of the other shelves and the chart table, everywhere I can think of. Nothing. The next morning, I walk to the place where Uncle Liberty’s mob camps in the season they call Makuru, when the first heavy rains start to fall. The trail is less well worn than it once was, but still clear enough, winding along the coast through shell hakea and catspaw heathland, across the six creek fords to Kwesi Point, then following our rough stone cairns up over the rounded granite headland and back down through the big valley trees to the camp. The first time I did the trip I was seven years old. Uncle Liberty had arrived with news that his wife Jenny was going into labour. My mum had delivered Jennifer’s first baby, and she’d asked Mum to help her through it again. I had insisted on going with her. It was the height of summer, and hot. The dark sand of the path burned the soles of my feet, and the sun seemed determined to crush me into insignificance. Mum kept asking me if I wanted to go back, but I just told her no and kept trudging along on my stumpy little legs. In her telling of it, I was stoically resolute. In reality I was afraid of walking back alone. I can still remember the urgency in Mum’s voice as she urged me along, the impatience in her eyes as she glanced over her shoulder at me before surging ahead again on her long, powerful legs. This time, eighteen years on, there is no one watching over me, no one pulling me along in her protective slipstream. I am alone. Squalls shake the wind-shaped peppermint and acacia, ruffle across the hills. Rain comes in angled sheets, passing over and then gone. I don’t rush, not like back then with Mum. I am thinking, taking my time, turning it all over in my head. By the time I reach Kwesi Point, a rocky promontory about halfway from our bay to Uncle Liberty’s camp, the sun has passed its zenith and glows diffuse behind the clouds. Mum named this place after Aunty Jenny’s first baby, on the day he was born. But she also named it after my father. He came from a place called Ghana, in Africa, and died in a place called Brownwood, in Texas, six months before I was born. Kwesi was his name – ‘Born on Sunday’ in Ashanti, the language of his people. I am Kweku, which means ‘Born on Wednesday’. And it’s there, staring out across the bay, that I decide to write this history. This is for him, for both of them, the father I never knew and the one who raised me. And this is the first step. By the time I reach the camp’s outer picket it is dark. The rain has stopped and stars shine down through the bands of slow-moving cloud. I can see the lights of the camp through the trees, smell woodsmoke and meat cooking. ‘Hey there, young fella.’ I look in the direction of the voice. A man is standing in the star shadow of a huge jarrah. I step closer, peer into the darkness. It is Uncle Liberty, twirling the base of his spear in the root soil. ‘Uncle. Hello.’ I’d learned never to be surprised by Uncle Liberty’s appearances and equally sudden departures. He leans forward slightly so that one side of his face catches the faint firelight from the camp. His beard is longer than when I saw him last, the hollows under his cheekbones deeper. ‘Been expectin’ ya.’ ‘Anniversary of Papa’s death.’ ‘Yes, I know. We don’t talk about such.’ ‘I know, Uncle. But we do.’ ‘His time. We all got one. Mine coming soon.’ ‘If you want to live …’ ‘…You gotta die.’ One of Uncle Liberty’s favourite sayings. I’d heard it since I was young, he and Papa reciting it like that, as a couplet. ‘He was a good man, your papa. Too few of them nowadays.’ ‘He always said the same about you.’ Uncle Liberty straightens. It is a careful, deliberate motion, as with everything he does. His face recedes into darkness. Insects thrum and tick. A boobook owl calls, somewhere close. For a moment I think Uncle Liberty is gone, heard the news he needed, nothing more required, on his way. ‘I know why you’re here, young fella. Know you got questions. Your papa told me about you. Gonna write the next history of the world, a young Herodotus for our times.’ I smile, embarrassed as only parents can make you. ‘It may take a while.’ ‘Well, I got as much time as I got.’ We walk into camp. A few old steel shipping containers converted into dwellings, grafted with plankboard and tin-roofed porches. The large stone house Liberty and Papa built together one year. Solar panels about, a few electric lights showing through the cut windows, all of it shaded by big, old trees, set in a henge of granite boulders. Uncle Liberty motions me to sit by the fire. ‘Eat first,’ he says. ‘Then we’ll talk.’ A young boy brings me a cup of water and a plate of grilled roo, some fresh greens. Some of the elders come and sit with us, watch me eat. ‘Teacher and the doctor’s boy,’ says Uncle Liberty. The elders...