"Philip Jose Farmer - Riverworld 4 - The Magic Labyrinth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

Later, he reconverted both his wife and the priest to their native faith.

He was set back somewhat, though, when he heard that the true Jesu Christ had
appeared in this area with a Hebrew woman who had known Moses in Egypt and
during the exodus. Jesu had also been accompanied by a man named Thomas Mix,
an American, the descendant of Europeans who had emigrated to the continents
discovered only twenty-one years after Malory had died. Jesu and Mix had
burned to death together in bonfires ignited by Kramer.

At first, Malory had denied that the man calling himself Yeshua could be the
real Christ. He might be a Hebrew of Christ's time, but he was a fake.

Then Malory, after tracking down all the evidence he could

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of Yeshua's statements and the events of his martyrdom, decided that perhaps
Christ had truly been present. So he incorporated the tale told by the locals
into the epic he was now writing with ink and a pen formed from the bone of a
fish on bamboo paper. Malory also decided to canonize the American, and so Mix
became Saint Thomas the Steadfast of the White Hat.

After a while Malory and his disciples forgot that the sainthood was a fiction
and came to believe that Saint Thomas was indeed roaming The Valley in quest
of his master, sweet Jesu, in this world which was purgatory, though not
exactly the middle state between earth and heaven portrayed by the priests of
lost Earth.

The ex-priest who'd married Thomas and Philippa, as a bishop ordained on Earth
and so in the direct line of priesthood sjrom Saint Peter, was able to
instruct others and to make priests of them. The little group of Roman
Catholics, however, had a different attitude in one respect from that they'd
had in their Terrestrial days. They were tolerant; they did not attempt to
bring back the Inquisition nor did they burn suspected witches. If they had
insisted on these old customs, they would have quickly been exiled or perhaps
even killed.
Late one night, Thomas Malory was lying in bed and pondering on the next
chapter of his epic. Suddenly, there was a great shouting outside and a noise
as of many running. He sat up and called to Philippa, who awoke frightened and
trembling. They went out then to ask what the commotion was about. The people
questioned pointed upward into the cloudless sky made bright as a full moon by
the packed stars and flaming cosmic-gas sheets.

High up were two strange objects silhouetted against the celestial blaze. One,
much smaller, was composed of two parts, a larger sphere above the other.
Though those on the ground could not see any linkage between the two, they got