Return to Eden

RETURN TO EDEN
    Harry Harrison
    Published 1988. ISBN 0-553-27700-6
    CONTENTS
    Prologue
    Chapter 1
    Chapter 2
    Chapter 3
    Chapter 4
    Chapter 5
    Chapter 6
    Chapter 7
    Chapter 8
    Chapter 9
    Chapter 10
    Chapter 11
    Chapter 12
    Chapter 13
    Chapter 14
    Chapter 15
    Chapter 16
    Chapter 17
    Chapter 18
    Chapter 19
    Chapter 20
    Chapter 21
    Chapter 22
    Chapter 23
    Chapter 24
    Chapter 25
    Chapter 26
    Chapter 27
    Chapter 28
    Chapter 29
    Chapter 30
    Chapter 31
    Chapter 32
    Chapter 33
    Chapter 34
    Chapter 35
    Envoy
    This is a story of the world today.
    This is our world as it would be if a meteor had not struck the Earth 65 million years ago.
    The world at that time was populated by the great reptiles. They were the most successful life form that the Earth had ever seen. For over 140 million years they had ruled the land, filled the sky, swarmed in the seas. Scu3333332ttling beneath their feet were the mammals. These mammals were the ancestors of mankind. Tiny, shrew-like animals that were preyed on by the larger, faster, more intelligent saurians.
    Then, 65 million years ago, this all changed. A meteor six miles in diameter struck the Earth a222nd caused disastrous atmospheric upheavals. Within a brief span of time over seventy-five percent of the species then existent were wiped out. The age of the dinosaurs was over; the evolution of the mammals that they had suppressed for 100 million years began. The world as we know it was born.
    But what would our world be like today if that meteor had not fallen?
    This is the story of that world.
    Today.
    PROLOGUE: KERRICK
    Life is no longer easy. Too much has changed, too many are dead, the winters are too long. It was not always this way. I remember clearly the encampment where I grew up, remember the three families there, the long days, friends, good food. During the warm seasons we stayed on the shore of a great lake filled with fish. My first memories are of that lake, looking across its still water at the high mountains beyond, seeing their peaks grow white with the first snows of winter. When the snow whitened our tents and the grass around as well, that would be the time when the hunters went to the mountains. I was in a hurry to grow up, eager to hunt the deer, and the greatdeer, at the hunters' side.
    That simple world of simple pleasures is gone forever. Everything has changed, and it must be said, not for the better. At times I wake up at night and wish that what happened had never happened. But these are foolish thoughts and the world is as it is, changed now in every way. What I thought was the entirety of existence has proved to be only a tiny corner of reality. My lake and my mountains are only the smallest part of this great continent that borders an immense ocean to the east.
    I also know about the others, the creatures we call murgu, and I learned to hate them even before I saw them. I will tell you about them.
    As our flesh is warm, theirs is chill. When you look at us you see that we have hair upon our heads. A hunter will grow a proud beard, while the animals that we hunt have warm flesh and fur or hair. But this is not true of the murgu. They are cold and smooth and scaled, have claws and teeth to rend and tear, are large and terrible, to be feared. And hated. When I was very young I learned about them, knew that they lived in the warm waters of the ocean to the south and on the warm lands to the south. They eannot abide the cold so although I grew up fearing them I also knew they could not trouble us.
    All that has changed so terribly that nothing will be the same ever again. That is because there are murgu called Yilanè who are intelligent, just as we Tanu are intelligent. It has become my frightening knowledge that our world is only a tiny part of the Yilanè world. I know now that we live in the far northern part of a great continent. Know as well that to the south of us, over all the land, swarm only murgu and Yilanè.
    And there is even worse. Across the ocean an even larger continent exists—and in this distant land are no hunters at all. None. Yilanè, only Yilanè. The entire world is theirs except for our small part.
    Now I will tell you the worst thing about the Yilanè. They hate us as we hate them. This would not matter if they were only great, insensate beasts. We would stay in the cold north and avoid them in this manner.
    But there are those among them who may be as intelligent as hunters, as fierce as hunters. And although their number cannot be