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Earth---her Earth, her time--but in the library records his name was always
used reverently. He was always "Gentle
Nader' or "the Good Man." Those who took his namethe Naderites--were a
powerful political force, and had been for centuries.
Or . . . would be. She vowed to use the physicist's concept of time from
here on, with events strung along a line, and no particular breakdown into
past, present or future.
After the Death, the hideous Long Winter and the Recovery Revolutions, a
Spaniard named Diego Garcia de Santillana rose to power in the remains of
Western Europe, under the banner of the Return to Life movement. He initiated
a tentative push for world government.
The next year, in 2010 (justfive years from now, she thought, breaking her
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vow) the first Naderite coalitions formed in North America.
Nader--"martyred" during the Death--had been chosen for his stand against
nuclear energy and excessive technology; however just or unjust the elevation,
he became a saintly figure, a hero in a wasteland still filled with fear and
rage against what the human race had done to itself. In 2011, the Naderites
absorbed the Return to Lifers, and the re-emerging governments of North
America and Western Europe made pacts of exchange and cooperation. Naderite
governments were put into office by landslide elections and immediate curbs
were sought on high technology and nuclear research. "Agrarianize!" became
the rallying cry of a third of the world economy, and the Raiders--an elite,
somewhat shadowy organization--fanned out around the world to
"persuade" reluctant governments to join in. In Russia, the revolution of
2012, staged by Naderite sympathizers, brought down the last Council
government of the USSR, Which had already retreated into its center of power,
the Russian Soviet Federal Socialist Republic. Nations throughout the Eastern
bloc regained their political sovereignty, and most of them went over to the
Naderites.
That, at least, explained the prevalance of Nader's name in the records.
Between 2015 and 2100, the followers of the Good Man consolidated their power
over two-thirds of the world. The only dogged resistance in those decades was
in Asia, where the Greater Asian
Cooperative--made up of Japan, China, Southeast Asia (occasionally) and
Malaysia--renounced Naderism and returned enthusiastically to scientific
research and high technology, including nuclear energy. The
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the Naderites in the West began in 2100 with the Volks movement in Gross
Deutschland--She switched off the machine and lay back in the chair, rubbing
her eyes. The information had come in printed displays, selected visuals and
even more selected sounds.
Where documentation of the multimedia sort was lacking, print took over, but
with subtle and clear vocal accompaniment.
Compared to this, simple reading was torture and current video methods as
archaic as cave paintings.
If she were so inclined, she could pleasantly spend the rest of her life here,
an eternal scholar parasitizing the knowledge of centuries neither she nor her
ancestors had lived through.
Considering the alternatives she faced, that prospect was very attractive.
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The hour was almost up.
She returned to the system briefly to look up information on the corridor, the
exodus of the Stoners and the desertion of the cities.
In each instance she was met with a very graphic floating spiked ball
signaling no access.
Meeting Takahashi outside, where he was calmly smoking a cigarette---the first
she had seen on the Stone Patricia stretched her arms and neck. "I'm going to
have to come back."
"Of course."
"Where to next?"
"A short tour. We can't walk to where we're going in any reasonable time, so
we'll use a track."
The garage for the third chamber trucks was a sheet metal shed nestled
incongruously at the base of one of the chamber-spanning arches. A
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subway entrance opened nearby; the transit lines that had once served
Thistledown City were no longer operative, however, and to get from one subway
junction to anywhere else in the city, it was necessary to drive trucks along
the narrow service roads.
"I can't access anything in the libraries on the exodus," Patricia said as
Takahashi inspected a truck. He bent down to peer beneath the chassis, then
stood straight and brushed his hands together.
"The archaeology group is working that out now. We should be back in time for
their weekly report; that's at eleven hundred hours." He glanced at his
watch. "It's oh nine hundred now. Everything seems to be shipshape. Shall
we be off?."
He held the driver's door open for her. "Had your truck lessons yet?"
Patricia shook her head.
"It's about time, then, don't you think?"
She shrugged nervously.
"Not hard at all. Especially here. The service roads are easy to follow.
We've learned the code for the signs on the walls that service machines
used--not that different from bar codes on Earth. Replaces street signs. I
just shine a pen reader on the signs near the corners and we know where we
are. I tell you when to turn . . . you turn.
All the service roads are surrounded by walls; you can't fall off anything
even if you try.
Okay?"
"Okay."
He climbed into the shotgun seat and showed her the colunm guidance system.
"It's like an airplane in one respect--push the colunm forward and the truck
moves forward; the farther you push, the faster it goes, up to a hundred
klicks. Slow down by pulling the stick back to upright; reverse by pulling
the stick toward you. Maximum speed in reverse is about ten klicks. Gear
shifting is automatic.
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Grip the handles on the horizontal bar and twist the bar the direction you
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