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

As we disembarked, every footstep, every splash echoed back at us. I looked up at the
ceiling, a dome spliced together from hundreds of curved triangular hull sections, tattooed with
scenes from the Scriptures. The original illustrations were more than a thousand years old, but
the living boatskin degraded the pigments on a time scale of decades, so the monks had to
constantly renew them.
"Beatrice Joining the Angels" was my favorite. Because the Angels weren't flesh, they didn't
grow inside their mothers; they just appeared from nowhere in the streets of the Immaterial
Cities. In the picture on the ceiling, Beatrice's immaterial body was half-formed, with cherubs
still working to clothe the immaterial bones of Her legs and arms in immaterial muscles, veins and
skin. A few Angels in luminous robes were glancing sideways at Her, but you could tell they
weren't particularly impressed. They'd had no way of knowing, then, who She was.
A corridor with its own smaller illustrations led from the atrium to the meeting room. There
were about fifty people in the Prayer Group -- including several priests and monks, though they
acted just like everyone else. In church you followed the liturgy; the priest slotted-in his or
her sermon, but there was no room for the worshippers to do much more than pray or sing in unison
and offer rote responses. Here it was much less formal. There were two or three different speakers
every night -- sometimes guests who were visiting the monastery, sometimes members of the group --
and after that anyone could ask the group to pray with them, about whatever they liked.
I'd fallen behind the others, but they'd saved me an aisle seat. Agnes was to my left, then
Daniel, Bartholomew and Rachel. Agnes said, "Are you nervous?"
"No."
Daniel laughed, as if this claim was ridiculous.
I said, "I'm not." I'd meant to sound loftily unperturbed, but the words came out sullen and
childish.
The first two speakers were both lay theologians, Firmlanders who were visiting the
monastery. One gave a talk about people who belonged to false religions, and how they were all --
in effect -- worshipping Beatrice, but just didn't know it. He said they wouldn't be damned,
because they'd had no choice about the cultures they were born into. Beatrice would know they'd
meant well, and forgive them.


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I wanted this to be true, but it made no sense to me. Either Beatrice was the Daughter of
God, and everyone who thought otherwise had turned away from Her into the darkness, or ... there
was no "or." I only had to close my eyes and feel Her presence to know that. Still, everyone
applauded when the man finished, and all the questions people asked seemed sympathetic to his
views, so perhaps his arguments had simply been too subtle for me to follow.
The second speaker referred to Beatrice as "the Holy Jester", and rebuked us severely for not
paying enough attention to Her sense of humor. She cited events in the Scriptures which she said
were practical jokes, and then went on at some length about "the healing power of laughter." It
was all about as gripping as a lecture on nutrition and hygiene; I struggled to keep my eyes open.
At the end, no one could think of any questions.
Then Carol, who was running the meeting, said, "Now Martin is going to give witness to the
power of Beatrice in his life."
Everyone applauded encouragingly. As I rose to my feet and stepped into the aisle, Daniel
leaned toward Agnes and whispered sarcastically, "This should be good."
I stood at the lectern and gave the talk I'd been rehearsing for days. Beatrice, I said, was
beside me now whatever I did: whether I studied or worked, ate or swam, or just sat and watched