"Stanley G. Weinbaum - Margaret Of Urbs 01 - The Black Flame" - читать интересную книгу автора (Weinbaum Stanley G)

"They were men like us, Hull. As for flyingтАФwell, it's my belief that flying is a legend. See here;
there was a man supposed to have flown over the cold lands to the north and those to the south, and also
across the great sea. But this flying man is called in some accounts Lind-bird and in others Bird, and
surely one can see the origin of such a legend. The migrations of birds, who cross land and seas each
year, that is all."

"Or perhaps magic," suggested Hull.

"There is no magic. The Ancients themselves denied it, and I have struggled through many a moldy
book in their curious, archaic tongue."

Old Einar was the first scholar Hull had ever encoun-tered. Though there were many during the
dawn of that brilliant age called the Second Enlightenment, most of them were still within the
Empire. John Holland was dead, but Olin was yet alive in the world, and Kohlmar, and Jorgensen,
and Teran, and Martin Sair, and Joaquin Smith the Master. Great namesтАФthe names of demigods. But
Hull knew little of them. "You can read!" he ex-claimed. "That in itself is a sort of magic. And you have
been within the Empire, even in N'Orleans. Tell me, what is the Great City like? Have they
really learned the secrets of the Ancients? Are the Immortals truly im-mortal? How did they gain
their knowledge?"

Old Einar settled himself on the step and puffed blue smoke from his pipe filled with the harsh
tobacco of the region. "Too many questions breed answers to none," he observed. "Shall I tell you the
true story of the world, HullтАФthe story called History?"

"Yes. In Ozarky we spoke little of such things."

"Well," said the old man comfortably, "I will begin then, at what to us is the beginning, but to the
Ancients was the end. I do not know what factors, what wars, what struggles, led up to the mighty world
that died dur-ing the Dark Centuries, but I do know that three hun-dred years ago the world reached its
climax. You cannot imagine such a place, Hull. It was a time of vast cities, tooтАФfifty times as large as
N'Orleans with its hundred thousand people."

He puffed slowly. "Great steel wagons roared over the iron roads of the Ancients. Men crossed the
oceans to east and west. The cities were full of whirring wheels, and instead of the many little city-states
of our time, there were giant nations with thousands of cities and a hundred millionтАФa hundred and fifty
million people."

Hull stared. "I do not believe there are so many people in the world," he said.

Old Einar shrugged. "Who knows?" he returned. "The ancient booksтАФall too fewтАФtell us that the
world is round, and that beyond the seas lie one, or several con-tinents, but what races are there today
not even Joaquin Smith can say." He puffed smoke again. "Well, such was the ancient world. These were
warlike nations, so fond of battle that they had to write many books about the horrors of war to keep
themselves at peace, but they always failed. During the time they called their twentieth century there was
a whole series of wars, not such little quarrels as we have so often between our city-states, nor even
such as that between the Memphis League and the Empire, five years ago. Their wars spread like storm
clouds around the world, and were fought between mil-lions of men with unimaginable weapons that
flung de-struction a hundred miles, and with ships on the seas, and with gases."

"What's gases?" asked Hull.