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savages, you may discharge the debt by tell-ing me the identities of the
raiders."
Kane glanced questioningly at Brigid, then toward Grant. He was reticent by
nature and had become more so since his exile. A casual word spoken to the
wrong person in the wrong place could spell death for everyone in Cerberus and
perhaps even the destruc-tion of the installation itself.
Brigid surprised him slightly by saying, "There doesn't seem to be any reason
to hold out on them. We're just as curious about them as they are about us.
It's the diplomatic thing to do."
Kiyomasa suddenly dropped to his knees and swiftly arranged his legs in a
lotus position. Shizuka did so, as well. The samurai motioned with his hand.
"Speak, Kane-san."
Brigid, Kane and Grant lowered themselves to the ground. The two men failed
miserably when they tried to smoothly cross legs as Kiyomasa and Shizuka had
done. After a moment of grunting effort, they managed. Domi did not sit down.
She remained lean-ing against the rock formation.
Kane began speaking quickly, doing far more than simply identifying the
raiders of Port Morninglight as
Magistrates. Such a simple answer would not satisfy Kiyomasa and would only
lead to a protracted ques-
tion-and-answer session. The man obviously was not a fool, and Kane could not
treat him like one.
To save time he decided to provide an overview of the baronies. He described
how the Magistrates were the organizational descendants of a proposed global
police force of the late twentieth century, one that had judicial, as well as
law-enforcement powers. He sup-plied only a few specifics, soft-pedaling the
patrilineal traditions of the MagS;
There seemed little reason to conceal his and Grant's own long associations
with the Magistrates. He stressed the kind of firepower used by the armored
enforcers, so Kiyomasa would not become overcon-fident in the swords, bows and
ancient carbines car-ried by his Tigers. Although he mentioned
Cerberus, he did so only in passing and glossed over its actual location.
As he spoke, Kane surreptitiously watched Kiyom-asa's reaction to what he was
told. His face remained as immobile as his helmet's face guard, although he
nodded at times, as if he understood a fine point.
When he was done, Kiyomasa lowered his eyelids and said nothing for a brief
span of time.
Then, inhaling sharply through his splayed nostrils, he said, "Our friends at
Port Morninglight told us a few things about the barons and the Magistrates.
Your knowledge is far more detailed than theirs, yet noth-ing you said is at
variance with what we were already told."
Irritated, Kane demanded, "Why didn't you tell me what you already knew to
save us all some time?"
"Forgive me, Kane-san," the Tiger captain replied politely. "Although I need
information, I needed to know if you spoke falsehoods before I confided in
you. I hope you understand."
Kane nodded. "I suppose I do."
Kiyomasa bowed formally. "
Hai
. Now it is my turn."
Page 45
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
The man began his tale in a precise monotone that was an unsettling
counterpoint to the fanciful lan-guage he employed to relate a strange yet
lyrical story. He took the four outlanders back through the long centuries
past.
file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%2...20Outlander%2015%20-%20Doom%20Dyn
asty.html (44 of 128) [12/28/2004 4:00:03 PM]
James Axler - Outlanders - Doom Dynasty
Long, long before the skies darkened on the island empire that the West called
Japan and the East called
Nippon, millennia passed during which the common folk honored their emperor as
the living descendant of the gods. And though the emperor was adored as
divine, he had no true power. To deal in earthly, mor-tal matters was to
degrade his lofty position.
The society was strictly caste based, and everyone a grade higher had the
power of death over those below him. One merely had to say the word and the
person was immediately executed. If he was samurai or of a noble family, he
was allowed to commit a ritual suicide, called seppuku.
Noblemen called daimyos took over the common chores of administering the
empire. They held great prestige and when combined with the practice of the
samurai code called Bushido, the way of the warrior, they were the powers to
be reckoned with, not the emperor.
Kane couldn't help but wonder if the daimyos held the same reverence for their
god-king as the com-moner did. To them, he was only an instrument by which
power could be obtained, the population con-trolled much like the way the
baronies operated.
By the mid-twentieth century, Japan's martial phi-losophy had earned it the
questionable distinction of being the first country to suffer from the effects
of nuclear weapons. The nation put aside its blades, called katanas
, its deification of samurai as folk he-roes and its exaltation of a noble
death. Instead it focused on technology and ironically enough, har-nessing
atomic power to make a safe and nearly eter-nal energy source. By the end of
the twentieth cen-tury, the land of the rising sun was the premier economic
power in the Cific Basin.
On January 20, 2001, the day of the dark sky, a chain reaction triggered not
only meltdowns but ex-plosions in Japan's nuclear reactors. Those in turn
sparked volcanic eruptions and earthquakes of such magnitude all of the
smaller islands around Nippon sank without a trace. Northern Honshu, the
largest province, was inundated by tsunamis, tidal waves a thousand feet high,
according to legend.
All that remained of the land of the rising sun was a mountainous island,
barely 150 miles long, and no more than seventy miles wide at its broadest
point By the time survivors crept out of shelters and climbed down from
mountain peaks, almost none of the technology that had made the country a
world economic power remained intact.
But since the Japanese were an extraordinarily in-dustrious race, they rebuilt
their nation with the little they could salvage from the ruins. The first
post-skydark generation wrung its living from the sea, as had their ancestors
centuries before.
The old feudal system was revived as an extreme reaction to how westernized
Nippon, had become be-fore the holocaust. The new society was a return to the
old ways of shoguns, samurai and peasants.
The peasants were put to work, utilizing what little resources remained on the
island. Many of the old skills had been lost, and so the industries that
sprang up on the coastal areas pumped pollutants and toxins into both the sea
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