John Ringo - There Will Be Dragons

“We can grow cosilk,” Myron noted. The hybrid cotton that integrated many of the properties of silk was hardy and made excellent cloth, but it was generally considered a hot-weather plant.

“We can also raise sheep,” Bethan said.

“You can get more material per square acre out of cosilk,” the farmer pointed out. “Admittedly, wool is a lot better for cold weather; cosilk doesn’t insulate worth a damn. But I’ve only got five sheep; we’ll have cosilk in abundance long before we have much wool.”

“There’s ferals,” Robert pointed out. “You know what the ridges look like in the summer.” Most of the ferals were from modern sheep stocks that automatically dropped their wool when the weather turned warm. This had originally been a genetic design to eliminate the chore of shearing but with the ferals it meant that for a few weeks in early summer the ridgelines above the valley were dotted with patches of white. Many of the birds’ nests in the area were made of pure wool, finer than the best cashmere.

“You have some?” Edmund asked. “Cosilk that is.”

“Aye, I’ve never grown it but I know how.”

“Cosilk has more uses than clothes,” Robert said. “We’re going to need it for bowstrings, rope…”

“Better hemp for the rope. We can get at least one crop of silk in this year. Carding and spinning though… very manpower intensive. I don’t suppose there’s much chance of some powered carding and spinning plants by the time the crop’s in?”

“When?” Edmund asked.

“By September, say?”

“Maybe, there’s so many draws on the few artisans we have. Put it on the list. What’s the growing season?”

“Off the top of my head I don’t recall. After the ground is good and warm and longer here than down south; it grows better in hot climes, but, then, many things do.”

“Tea,” Edmund grumped. “I’m nearly out.”

“No caffeinating materials at all,” Myron agreed. “I’ve a few hothouse tea plants but not enough to make more than a cup or two a year. No coffee, tea…”

“I can’t believe you guys poison yourselves that way,” Sheida said disparagingly. “Caffeine is horrible for your body.”

“… No chocolate,” Myron continued.

“No chocolate?”

“It’s got caffeine in it,” Edmund said with a grin.

“Well, trace elements,” Sheida replied with a sniff. “But no chocolate ?”

“Requires several products that are only grown in the tropics,” Myron said dolefully. “No chocolate. Not until some sort of trade is established.”

“Well that is going to get a priority then!”

“Citrus,” Edmund said, shaking his head. “I’m going to miss citrus. And it’s a good scurvy preventer.”

“ That you can grow in Festiva,” Myron replied. “If the weather settles out.”

It had started within a day of the Fall; the weather had closed in and stayed that way. Wind, rain, sleet, rivers flooding. It seemed as if it would never stop storming as all the pent-up fury of weather long leashed was released upon the land.

“It’s going to,” Sheida replied with a shake of her head. “Did you hear what happened?”

“No?” Myron replied but everyone looked interested.

“The program that did weather control was an AI, that I knew, but what I didn’t know was that it was one of the really old ones; it actually predated weather control and was a weather forecasting AI.”

“Damn, that is old,” Myron said as the wind tore at the roof of the pub. “And that means it can predict this stuff?”

“Sort of, maybe. So the Fall happens and the Council starts fighting and suddenly it’s got no power to do weather control. It’s back to forecasting. Talk about pissed .”

“Ouch.”

“Her name is Lystra, and I do mean she . Anyway, it’s not ‘hiding’ like a lot of the AI’s but it has declared itself strictly neutral. It doesn’t care who wins just that they get the power systems back on line so it can get back to controlling the weather! She’s really, really pissed.”

“Funny.”

“Yeah, one humorous spot in an otherwise crappy situation. Lystra says about a month and a half.”

“We might be able to get one crop in the ground in time. It’ll have to dry some before we can plant. And a few more plows wouldn’t hurt.”

“I’m on it,” Edmund replied. “I’m glad Angus brought in that load of sheet stock. We need to send someone up to him to get some more material. And he’ll need food as well. We’ll have to see what we can spare.”

Myron took another sip of beer and his face worked. “So, have you heard anything about Rachel?”

“No,” Edmund said quietly as another blast shook the building.

“They’re not at home. One of me went there already but they’d gone,” Sheida said quietly. “Mother’s privacy protocols are intact, damnit, and I can’t simply order a location search without a supermajority of the Council. I’d have to do a full sweep to find them and… I just can’t spare the power. I’ve set out, well, guides, to find travelers. Hopefully one of them will find them and direct them to Raven’s Mill.”

“What kind of guides?” Edmund asked.

“There are… semiautonomous beings, like homunculi and hobs, that manage some of the ecological programs. I found a low-power update conduit that let me reprogram them. They now have the path to ‘safe’ areas mapped for each of their areas and if they find lost travelers they’ll direct them. It’s all I can do right now. Maybe later something more can be done.

“For most of the refugees, there’s not going to be a ‘later,’ ” Edmund said.

They had been traveling for nearly two weeks through the worst weather Rachel had seen in all her life.

The house had turned out to have an immense quantity of material suitable to take on the trip; Rachel had been surprised and even a little dismayed at how many of the objects in the house had to do with her father’s hobby. At times picking through the piles it had seemed as if Edmund Talbot had more of an influence on the home he had never entered than either of the people living there.

But the problem was not so much that they had items, but what items to pack. They both had good backpacks, late twenty-first-century designs that were light as a feather and fit their bodies like a glove. But filling them had taken careful thought. Finally, it was decided that the most important things were food and appropriate clothing and shelter. They had ended up leaving almost everything else. Rachel ended up packing a few items of jewelry and Daneh packed her single “period” medical book, something called Gray’s Anatomy . And with that they set out into the driving rain and sleet.

The weather had never relented. In the last thirteen days it had seemed to rain, sleet or snow an average of ten hours each day. All of the rivers and streams were swollen, and in a few cases the bridges that the hiking groups maintained were washed out. In those cases it was a matter of trying to carefully cross the freezing and swollen stream despite the lack of a bridge, or go upstream looking for a crossing place. Crossing was preferred even though the frigid water flooded under their clothes and seeped into their boots. Better to be soaked than take days out of the way. That finally happened to them at the Anar and it took them nearly two days out of their way before they found an intact log bridge.

This had taken them off the main trail that passed the small hamlet of Fredar and onto less well-tended trails through the wilderness. These weren’t any better or worse than the “main” trail, and the rain had turned them into soup as well. The boots they had dredged up were also late twenty-first century and the mud slid off them like water from a duck’s back. But the effort was still constant, to lift one wooden foot after another, slip, slide, grab at a tree or go down on your face in the sucking bog. It just went on and on in an unceasing view of trees, swollen streams and the very occasional natural meadow.