"Patrick Tilley - Amtrak 5 - Death - Bringer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)
file:///F|/rah/Patrick%20Tilley/Patrick%20Tilley%20-%20Amtrak%20Wars%20Book%205%20-%20Death-Bringer.txt
inhabited by grass-monkeys and long-dogs:
Plainfolk Mutes and Trackers - the soldier-citizens of the Amtrak
Federation. The Mutes were hairy savages, semi-nomadic hunters with no
craft skills beyond those needed to support their simple mode of
life.
All their edged-weapons, crossbows and metal implements were supplied
by the Iron Masters. But the Trackers were warriors who had no fear of
the Dark Light. It was the life-force of their underground society.
It enabled them to send images and voices through the air, it powered
their weapons, their giant, caterpillar-like land-cruisers and their
sky-chariots - war-machines which entered the cloud-realm of the kami
with impunity and were not cast down.
Their presence posed a threat to the world of Ne-Issan yet
Amaterasu-Omikami stood aside and did nothing. Their underground
cities were not crushed, and the world beyond the Appalachians was not
ravaged by heavenly fire - a theological conundrum that was studiously
ignored by the leading sages of the Shinto priesthood.
Ieyasu knew the answer. The Dark Light was neither good nor bad.
Electricity was a power that lay at the heart of the natural world. It
could be captured by special, cunningly-wrought machines and conveyed
along special threads from one place to another, or shot through the
air like an invisible arrow that flew across plains, mountains.
and seas within the space of a single heartbeat.
Like all power, it could be used and abused. It could corrupt, in the
same way that sake addled the brains of drunkards and opium destroyed
the will of addicts. But in its pure state, it was not inherently
evil. Electricity had been created to be the slave of man. Only if
the man was weak could the slave became his master. Ieyasu had certain
foibles but he was not a weak man. He enjoyed the attendant luxury his
privileged birth and high rank afforded him but he was consumed by
nothing except the desire to manipulate the reins of power to the
ultimate benefit of the Toh-Yota family and the Shogun.
In that order. Ieyasu ate well, drank judiciously, and kept his gaunt,
aging body in trim by practising his swordsmanship. He enjoyed male
and female company and could still produce a commendable erection which
a select circle of court ladies - ever anxious to advance themselves or
the careers of their husbands - accommodated by supplying him with a
string of pubescent nymphets.
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