"S. M. Stirling - Sea of Time 03 - On the Oceans of Eternity" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stirling S. M)

know what causes diseases and how to cure themтАж"

"What we've shown is just the shadow of what we had. Think
of it this way. If this palaceтАФthe palace and its dwellers aloneтАФ
were to be thrown back to the time before men knew how to
cultivate the earth or make bronze or write on clay, what would
happen?"
 Her brows knitted in thought. "The palace artisansтАФthere
would be none to bring them food, without peasants to grow the
barley. So they would have to go into the fields with plow and
hoe and sickle themselvesтАж and there would be no traders to
bring tin and copper and hard woods when those in the
storerooms were used upтАж and no work for all the scribes,
without a kingdom to administerтАж too many priestsтАж they
would all have to go to the fields or make bricks."

Smart girl! Clemens thought admiringly. It was a long time
before Adam Smith's observations on the division of labor, but
she'd grasped the principle that specialists depended on a big
population.

"Exactly," he said aloud. "We were faced with starvation,
because almost none of us were farmers or fishermen; and very
few were even artisans, because Nantucket had fewтАж
places-of-making, workshops." That was as close as he could get
to factory in this language; they were speaking Akkadian, to
improve his command of it.

"We hadтАФhaveтАФthe knowledge to make, oh, carts that run
without horses or oxen, or flying ships much larger and faster
than what you've seen, orтАФ " He shrugged. "But not the skilled
workers and special machines, or the machines that made the
machines, or the smelters and forges to make the metal, or to
find and refine the fuel, or the farmers to grow the food and the
roads to bring it to us. What we were able to make and maintain
was only a shadow of what our whole realm, the United States,
was able to do."

A buzz of voices rose from city and palace, a snarling roar
echoed from the sky, and a long teardrop shadow fell over them.
They looked up, leaning out from beneath the awning and
shading their eyes with a hand. The orca shape of the Republic of
Nantucket Air Service's Emancipator was passing over Babylon.
Five hundred feet of canvas, birch plywood, and goldbeater's
skin, the dirigible droned along with six ex-Cessna engines
pushing it through the warm Mesopotamian air, the Stars and
Stripes on its cruciform tailfins and the Coast Guard's red slash
and anchor on its flank.
 Azzu-ena shuddered. "That is but a shadow of your arts?" she
said.