"Patrick Tilley - Amtrak 5 - Death - Bringer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)

The government revenue and customs houses and the postal service were
always crying out for more. Sinners, on the other hand, made better
dinner companions. And they were a lot easier to do business with.

Ieyasu was also a traditionalist, as opposed to those who favoured
progressive ideals - a group of domain-lords led by the Yama-Shita
family. But the progress advocated by this cabal of entrepreneurs was
restricted to the introduction of new industrial processes and
manufacturing techniques. No one, however radical their ideas were in
that direction, was in favour of modernising the feudal system on which
Ne-Issan had been built.

The problem - in Ieyasu's eyes at least - was that you could not have
one without undermining the other. And none of the seventeen ruling
samurai families was prepared to surrender an ounce of power or
privilege to the lower classes. It was the merchants who argued the
case for an expanding economy and the benefits to be gained by
increasing the purchasing power of the masses by if you please - paying
tradesmen and servants higher wages! Some had even suggested setting
up trade links with the long-dogs inhabiting the buried cities beyond
the Western Hills - but what else could one expect from chinamen who
had an abacus where their brains should be?

The greatest bar to progress was the immutable edict which forbade,
under pain of death, the reintroduction of the Dark Light. It was also
a treasonable offence for lesser mortals to utter its name and such was
the dread it inspired, even those at the pinnacle of power only did so
with the greatest circumspection. According to the scrolls which
chronicled the distant past, the creation of the Dark Light electricity


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- had corrupted mankind and led the gods to destroy The World Before
with a tidal wave of golden fire. A wave that had engulfed the ancient
homeland of the Iron Masters, and which was so high, it had covered the
peak of Fuji, the sacred mountain which contained the soul of Nippon.

As a result, there was a deeply-held belief that to seek to resurrect
the Dark Light would be an act of incredible folly which would once
again place the world in mortal peril.

But, as Ieyasu knew, the world of Ne-Issan was bordered by the
Appalachians and the Eastern Sea. There was another vaster world
beyond the Western Hills,