"Greg Egan - Oceanic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

file:///G|/rah/Greg%20Egan%20-%20Oceanic.txt

Oceanic
by Greg Egan

Thanks to Caroline Oakley, Anthony Cheetham, John Douglas, Peter Robinson, Kate
Messenger, Philip Patterson, Tony Gardner, Russ Galen, David Pringle, Lee Montgomerie, Gardner
Dozois, Sheila Williams, and Bill Congreve.




file:///G|/rah/Greg%20Egan%20-%20Oceanic.txt (1 of 39) [2/14/2004 12:21:31 AM]
file:///G|/rah/Greg%20Egan%20-%20Oceanic.txt



1
The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into
step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint
rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like
floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back
down again.
In the bunk above me, my brother Daniel said distinctly, "Do you believe in God?"
My head was cleared of sleep in an instant, but I didn't reply straight away. I'd never
closed my eyes, but the darkness of the unlit cabin seemed to shift in front of me, grains of
phantom light moving like a cloud of disturbed insects.
"Martin?"
"I'm awake."
"Do you believe in God?"
"Of course." Everyone I knew believed in God. Everyone talked about Her, everyone prayed to
Her. Daniel most of all. Since he'd joined the Deep Church the previous summer, he prayed every
morning for a kilotau before dawn. I'd often wake to find myself aware of him kneeling by the far
wall of the cabin, muttering and pounding his chest, before I drifted gratefully back to sleep.
Our family had always been Transitional, but Daniel was fifteen, old enough to choose for
himself. My mother accepted this with diplomatic silence, but my father seemed positivelyproud of
Daniel's independence and strength of conviction. My own feelings were mixed. I'd grown used to
swimming in my older brother's wake, but I'd never resented it, because he'd always let me in on
the view ahead: reading me passages from the books he read himself, teaching me words and phrases
from the languages he studied, sketching some of the mathematics I was yet to encounter first-
hand. We used to lie awake half the night, talking about the cores of stars or the hierarchy of
transfinite numbers. But Daniel had told me nothing about the reasons for his conversion, and his
ever-increasing piety. I didn't know whether to feel hurt by this exclusion, or simply grateful; I
could see that being Transitional was like a pale imitation of being Deep Church, but I wasn't
sure that this was such a bad thing if the wages of mediocrity included sleeping until sunrise.
Daniel said, "Why?"
I stared up at the underside of his bunk, unsure whether I was really seeing it or just
imagining its solidity against the cabin's ordinary darkness. "Someone must have guided the Angels
here from Earth. If Earth's too far away to see from Covenant ... how could anyone find Covenant
from Earth, without God's help?"