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    Green Sunset - #1: Prey, predators, parasites
    Green Sunset - #1: Prey, predators, parasites
    Green Sunset - #1: Prey, predators, parasites
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    Green Sunset - #1: Prey, predators, parasites

    By Adriana Pertile

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    About this ebook

    This novel has already been published in 2015 (title: "TRAMONTO VERDE"): also as an eBook, in full and in the Italian language. We preferred to split the English version into multiple books, each of which offers, I think, a more than acceptable reading time.
    It is a post-catastrophic story, about a world that is equal to Earth, except for a remarkable area of its geography. There exists in fact a peninsula (Cordillera) between Italy and the Balkans, where on our true planet only lays the Adriatic Sea. A good part of the story takes place there. The novel tells of an unexplained phenomenon that has wiped out almost all of mankind. There were no property damages, but ... oil, radioactivity and explosives do not work anymore. Groups of survived Scientists congregate in selected renewable energy power plants and organize a worldwide network of research Centers, whose goal is to support humanity in its struggle to get back on its feet. In one of the Centers, housed in an ancient castle and located in a lakeside village of Cordillera, a group of botanists is on the threshold of achieving energy extraction from Flora, when, quite unexpectedly, radioactivity returns to action. Such event triggers a competition between botanists and physicists, both eager to be chosen by the Organization's leaders as the major energy producers. It will be a spiral of intrigue, involving Centers of different nations in a strife to last twenty years, which, in the lake Center, will intertwine with contrasts exploded on the green billiard cloth. The Botany Division's Master at the lakeside Center, feeling humiliated by his peer of Physics, will add to his divisional duties a personal and lonely research that will yield extraordinary discoveries. He will eventually succeed to have Flora itself as an ally in the competition. Along his new path, he will relive crucial moments of his life and discover the unimaginable architects of the catastrophe that has virtually wiped out humanity.
                                                                                               ///!\\\
    The content of the present first book, actually corresponds to the Prologue of the integral edition. It tells the adventures of the people embodying the historical and prehistoric roots of the main tale, which on the contrary develops in an age very similar to the one we are living in.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAdriana Pertile
    Release dateAug 18, 2017
    ISBN9788822812469
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      Book preview

      Green Sunset - #1 - Adriana Pertile

      parasites

      To destination

      They had hailed the pass' mouth as if it were the door of Eden, but something very different had been waiting for them there. It had happened a month before, when, at the beginning of an umpteenth meander, the nomadic guides had cut straight through the land, abandoning the bank of that last river. In recent times, they had skirted or forded several of those rivers, all of turbulent, ashen waters and it had always proven a difficult job. An endless expanse of swamps was now lying in front of them, and the guides piloted them amongst an insidious scattering of quick sands and bottomless ponds, but could not avoid the unforgiving swarming of mosquitoes by the billions. To call it a track could have seemed a joke, but that path was the only available marching ground for the throng of men and vehicles they had set into motion. Animals, above all, as an immense herd marched at their forefront: sheep, mules, horses and cattle that, besides providing the bulk of food, contributed to levelling the ground to the wagons' wheels and had provided emergency transportation in many instances. No human presence had been detected since they had set foot on the steppe.

      In the distance had finally appeared the heights: high and steep on the left, low and sweetly drooping on the right. In between there were miles of the same steppe they had trodden for more than two months. Too many, those miles, and so much so that at first sight nobody would ever have believed to be watching the entrance of a pass.

      Rising up on the galloping mounts, the Nomads had screamed the name of the place, guttural in their language, holding out their bows to point at it. A sigh of relief soared over the caravan, more for the riddance from the mosquitoes' nightmare than for quitting the treacherous mud. Later it was seen that it was not a true pass, because the river, now reappeared, crossed it straight on a perfect West-East direction: it was the gap between two different mountainous systems. As they entered it deeper and deeper, however, it showed to deserve that title. In fact, always high on the northern slope, a little more than hills on the South, the two massifs had come so close to one another as to force them to march into a veritable canyon for more than fifty kilometers.

      The Nomads had been crucial: countless times on that last stretch they had to dismantle the bigger wagons, to carry their pieces by mule over obstacles that otherwise would have imposed the end of the journey. Not to mention how often they had made the caravan divert to paths only visible to them, thus avoiding steps they only knew to be deadly.

      Seventh day

      Part one

      It was not long to dawn. Paxma, sitting on the back of the wagon, recalled those events with some discomfort. Not that he had contributed to the carriage of the slightest load. No, but his laziness just rebelled at the thought of those slogs. He raised an eyebrow at the thought of Quilen. Quilen was the leader, what was more a respected one: he had to set a good example. Actually, a long series of good examples.

      At the end, they had come out unscathed from those gorges, really all of them who had left the village. Now, however, Quilen was lying at death's door in a pallet just behind his shoulders. The great Quilen, hero and descendant of heroes. The man who, from the very first day, had contributed to opening his mind onto a reality that the Seminar Mentors had tried for long years and in all ways to place at the center of their teaching: the natives belonged to the Homo sapiens species. They were Homo sapiens but not always did their degree of civilization match their actual brainpower. In other words, CAUTION! Because one might find poorly evolved populations, but, though seldom, stronger in mind even than he. Caution!

      He pulled himself together. The other two remaining carriages had stopped on the track a hundred paces away and, between them, a campfire was burning: a thread of smoke rose a few meters, then dispersed in the steppe's breeze. Four Nomads patrolled the area: now and again one of them would appear on his pacing steed, soon to disappear again into brushes and unevenness of the ground.

      The thought that what had happened lied under his responsibility skimmed him occasionally, but he was not upset. There were no witnesses left: in a few days, the tribe had died out before his eyes and the bulk of Nomads had made off as soon as it had been clear that the caravan no longer existed. For all he knew, the nearest authority could not be other than some illiterate indigenous chieftain in an anonymous camp hundreds of kilometers down south. In addition, who could possibly have been aware of a caravan that, although massive and well escorted, had mostly moved through uninhabited territories? That caravan was the moving population of a village whose existence very few people had known outside its boundaries. Paxma shrugged, and actually started reliving the past week in his mind.

      First day

      At the canyon's outlet, the river had bent decidedly to North, while they had made for South East, on the gentle slope of a hilly formation that stretched as far as the eye could see in that direction. The track was now more beaten and the gait had become lively. Paxma sat on the driving seat of the first wagon, next to Quilen who was holding the reins, when Eslan, the head of the Nomads, had come galloping in a cloud of dust. He stopped a few steps away, pointing to the ground. Further on there are cattle trails. We will go on ahead in reconnaissance: it is advisable to check on the flanks. I will leave twenty men with you to keep the herd together. Remember, two of them must always ride in the rearguard, he said in his broken Attic. In a dozen kilometers you will find a crossroads. If we will not be there, just stop and wait for us. And he ran away in a gallop.

      So it had been. They reached the crossroads four hours later, and there was no one. The column had stopped: a hundred massive nomadic wagons, each drawn by four small but rustic and robust horses; altogether, they covered a good kilometer of track. From the front carriage, they saw it well, stretched out as it was along a wide curve that went round a group of flat rocky outcrops.

      He had alighted with Quilen to have a look around, but there was little to see: the hills were low and rounded, enough however to hide the tracks behind their first hump. Two branches peeled off at right angles, and were not very different from the main track: about ten meters wide, they could be mistaken for the rest of the landscape, except that the soil felt harder under the foot and the pasture grew a little patchier there.

      Shading his eyes, Paxma spun in a complete tour d'horizon. Nothing, except two smoke thickenings at the limits of both sidetracks, which were even difficult to detect in the distance haze. Maybe even some more vultures than usual, he told himself, looking up in a passing glance. He shrugged his shoulders again and turned to Quilen: Don't know ... There is little to see, here. Let's wait.

      The afternoon is gone, said Quilen. We might as well camp. What do you say?

      He rather fancied the idea of having something to eat and throwing himself onto his comfortable couch. Fine with me, he said, twisting his arm to rub his buttocks.

      Quilen whistled to a boy who was peeping through the second wagon's cover: You, who have good legs: rush up to the rear and warn everyone we are stopping here. They can camp right away.

      The Nomads squad came back after dark. They had split, because Eslan seemed to remember there were villages on both sides of the track, and had been right. As for residents, however, there remained very few. A plague, he said when finally he sat at dinner.

      It was unusual for a Nomad chief to have a meal with the sedentary; he did it with them just because he recognized their authority among that multitude that was his client. A large customer, as to that, who had paid in gold without even haggling. In fact, he had only muttered a price, conscious of pronouncing an enormity.

      On the other hand, he had then provided a first class service: fifty riders from the start and another fifty waiting for them with the herd at the exit of Salt Burg, where the mountains opened on the unending steppe.

      His rank therefore prevented him from immediately rushing to report, when returning from reconnaissance, because to his subordinates it would have seemed a servile act. No, first he had to have a massage session under the steam tent, maybe even a fleeting encounter with one of the concubines that garnished his carriage. So it had been today, and now he was there, silently staring at the two of them unknowing and trembling, with those coals he had for eyes, that in his face, cooked from weather, to his disappointment denounced a remote Mongolian ancestry.

      Nomads of Persian strain, remembered Paxma: considering themselves superior, did not like to be put on a par to any other tribe of the steppe. Although, idioms aside, customs, housing, carriages and weapons

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