Chapter 89：A trip to the pistachio mountains and thinking out loud

The Pistachio Mountains, unlike the Svet Mountains, were smaller, so it was faster to get to the last place.

During the trip, they were accompanied by a dull landscape.

The slopes were bare, without soil, without trees and shrubs, gray.

They drove along a dirt road. Dust rose behind them.

Some 90 years ago, the Pistachian mountains at that time were completely covered with turquoise vegetation, here and there red spots of poppies were ale.

Almond bushes and pistachios were visible. Clear and clear water flowed down the mountain slopes. Water gurgled and created a wonderful atmosphere for birds and animals. The mountains were alive and seemed to sing a cheerful song of the approaching summer.

But the Second World War came. She didn't get to Small-An. However, being a colony, the principality helped the front. Giving all the strength and resources to defeating the enemy. Therefore, coal, oil went to the front. And they drowned houses with dung and wood. Sometimes they brought him to train stations, but not always. Therefore, residents chopped shrubs and trees on the slopes in the mountains.

The war ended in victory, coal, and oil began to flow to civilians 15 years after the war. Since it was necessary first to restore the country to a second empire.

During this time, the slopes of the mountains lost vegetation and then soil. And without it, during the rains, the water did not linger. The rivers dried up, the plants died, the birds flew away, the animals ran away, the population was forced to move to other places where there was still water.

The groundwater level fell from three meters to twenty to thirty meters. The wells are empty.

Dara, looked at the dull gray mountains, here and there pits were visible. It was geologists who were looking for new gold deposits. Small-An mined 300 tons of gold per year. Of which 100 tons gave the mountains of Light. But slowly their reserves were depleted. Therefore, geologists searched elsewhere.

The pits were three meters wide and 500 meters long. Unlike treasure hunters, geologists simply left the pits as they were and went on to search further.

They threw pits in disappointment, instead of gold, geologists found uranium. Associated ore to gold. Uranium was not so important now since its delivery contracts have already been concluded for $ 3 billion with Japan, China, and the United States.

These pits scattered the landscape and carried dust, and it was radioactive. But who did it bother?

Once we live! Flashed in the head of Dara. He remembered the story, how an old professor was studying such a pit, he did not know that it was a uranium pit, it was in the desert that lay 300 km from the Pistachio Mountains in the far West of the Red Dragon. In the desert, there is already an increased natural radioactive background, and here also an open uranium belt. He is in the sun and sintered. Students came for him. but he is no longer there. Lies at the bottom of the pit without memory. Heatstroke. The poor fellow was irradiated.

The driver offered to look at the pits closer, to which Dara just waved his hand, saying that go, nothing to endanger yourself. So they went.

After 15 minutes, the jeep drove into a small valley inconspicuous from the road. Previously, water flowed here, a river, there were three wells. There were five houses. Judging by the old maps, they were back in the 17th century. At 19, ruins were already marked on the topographic map, ruins were marked on the topographic map of the 50s, and next to them was a small miner village with a small school. There was nothing on the topographic map of 1979 ...

By the way, old cards now could only be bought, since all the cards disappeared from libraries, scientific foundations, archives already in the 90-00s. They were simply stolen and then sold to foreigners for a couple of tens of dollars. Now foreign universities and research institutes had old maps and old magazines all issues from the 19th to the 20th century. Whereas Small-An almost completely lost its cultural heritage. Alas ... the level of education has plummeted. If a check were carried out, many doctors of science could not answer the simplest questions for first-year students of universities. But then they, like in old England in 1848, could buy degrees and diplomas for themselves. But so far they could not sell a patent for a degree, all the same in England, the system, even in the middle of the 19th century, was more capitalistic and democratic.

Therefore, now in Small-An, it was possible to buy cards only on Internet sites and only scanned copies, from a few dollars to a couple of hundred, for old topographic maps of villages and old forts from the 17th to the middle of the 20th centuries.