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

"What stopped it?" asked Hull.

"I do not know. They end, these pestilences. Those who take it and live cannot take it a second
time, and those who are somehow immune do not take it at all, and the restтАФdie. The Grey Death
swept the world for three years; when it ended, according to Martin Sair, one per-son in four had died.
But the plague came back in less-ening waves for many years; only a pestilence in the Ancient's
fourteenth century, called the Black Death, seems ever to have equalled it.

"Yet its effects were only beginning. The ancient trans-port system had simply collapsed, and the
cities were starving. Hungry gangs began raiding the countryside, and instead of one vast war there were
now a million lit-tle battles. The weapons of the Ancients were every-where, and these battles were
fierce enough, in all truth, though nothing like the colossal encounters of the great war. Year by year the
cities decayed until by the fiftieth year after the Grey Death, the world's population had fallen by
three-fourths, and civilization was ended. It was barbarism now that ruled the world, but only barbarism,
not savagery. People still remembered the mighty ancient civilization, and everywhere there were
attempts to com-bine into the old nations, but these failed for lack of great leaders."

"As they should fail," said Hull. "We have freedom now."

"Perhaps. By the first century after the Plague, there was little left of the Ancients save their ruined
cities where lurked robber bands that scoured the country by night. They had little interest in anything
save food or the coined money of the old nations, and they did incal-culable damage. Few could read,
and on cold nights it was usual to raid the ancient libraries for books to burn, and to make things worse,
fire gutted the ruins of all cities, and there was no organized resistance to it. The flames simply burned
themselves out, and priceless books vanished."

"Yet in N'Orleans they study, don't they?" asked Hull. "Yes, I'm coming to that. About two
centuries after the PlagueтАФa hundred years ago, that isтАФthe world had stabilized itself. It was much as
it is here today, with little farming towns and vast stretches of deserted country. Gunpowder had been
rediscovered, rifles were used, and most of the robber bands had been destroyed. And then, into the
town of N'Orleans, built beside the ancient city, came young John Holland.

"Holland was a rare specimen, anxious for learning. He found the remains of an ancient library and
began slowly to decipher the archaic words in the few books that had survived. Little by little others
joined him, and as the word spread slowly, men from other sections wandered in with books, and the
Academy was born. No one taught, of course; it was just a group of studious men living a sort of
communistic, monastic life. There was no attempt at practical use of the ancient knowledge until a youth
named Teran had a dreamтАФno less a dream than to recondition the centuries-old power machines of
N'Orleans, to give the city the power that travels on wires!"

"What's that?" asked Hull. "What's that, Old Einar?"

"You wouldn't understand, Hull. Teran was an en-thusiast; it didn't stop him to realize that there
was no coal or oil to run his machines. He believed that when power was needed, it would be there, so
he and his fol-lowers scrubbed and filed and welded away, and Teran was right. When he needed
power, it was there.

"This was the gift of a man named Olin, who had un-earthed the last, the crowning secret of the
Ancients, the power called atomic energy. He gave it to Teran, and N'Orleans became a miracle city