"Philip Jose Farmer - Tongues of the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

He turned away and said, "Let's go, Moshe."
They entered the ship through an airlock and seated themselves in two chairs placed just before the control
panel and observation screen. The sergeant pressed a button on the panel; long slender rods topped by curved metal
plates rose from orifices in the chairs and clamped themselves around the heads, chests, arms, and legs of the two
seated men. The sergeant then pressed another button; nothing seemed to result from the action. But the sergeant,
testing, found that he could not push his hand through the "stasis" field that now surrounded the two. He signalled to
them, and both depressed a plate on the right arm of their chairs. Immediately, the sergeant could extend his hand as
near them as he wished.
"The stasis is O.K.," he said. "Reactivate it now."
Broward and Yamanuchi settled back. The plates on the rods were not restraining devices but reminders that
they must stay in the chair. One of the peculiarities of the not well-understood stasis was that a material object on the
outside of the field could not pass through, not unless it was hurled with much more energy than the muscles of a man
could expend. Light and sound could pass through the stasis both ways, and a man within it could easily walk out
through it. If, however, during the state of terrific acceleration that would be experienced by the ship on most of its
journey to the Earth, a man within stasis were to stick so much as a finger through the field, he would be sucked out
into the "normal" fields and would be subject to them. That is, he would be crushed to death.
The sergeant made some rechecks of equipment, saluted the two, and left. They, looking at the energized
screen, saw only the seeming flat plain of the floor of Clavius, cleared of moondust, the near horizon, Earth hanging
close to the horizon, and the hard glare of the stars. Then, so swiftly that they could not at once comprehend it, even
though they were expecting and had experienced the sensation, they were away from the moon and in the glare of the
sun. Before them, on the control panel, the red light in the G column crept upwards; they were already past fifty
gravities.
The round of the Earth, dark on their left, luminous on their right, perceptibly ballooned. Outlines of the
continents and the flashings of the sun from the oceans and big lakes were missing. Since that fatal day, the Earth had
been covered with clouds. Even the ice caps of the Poles were smudged.
The two men were silent for a long time. Broward found himself reaching towards his pocket for a cigarette.
He smiled, but he wondered if he had not been too impulsive in giving away all his tobacco. Not that he could smoke
now, anyway. Light and sound and air could travel through the barrier. Theoretically, it was safe to smoke, but
regulations forbade.
Broward turned his head to look at Moshe on his left. Moshe had his eyes closed, and he was smiling
slightly.
"Thinking of women again?" said Broward.
"Bagels and lox," said Moshe. "Sara Bagels and Judith Lox, that is."
Moshe laughed, then said, "I'm lying. I was thinking of my mother and father."
"And you can laugh?"
"Laughter and tears are means of relieving tension. Sometimes, I laugh when others cry, and vice versa.
Maybe it's because I've had to dissimulate all my life. It's not easy to be a Jew."
"You're not a Jew," said Broward.
"Tell the others that. Tell them that being a Jew is a matter of one's religion, not of one's genes or whatever
faith one's parents happened to be."
"That's all in the past," said Broward. "People will forget after a while. Even if there is some slight feeling left
in their relations with you, your children won't be affected by it"
"My parents made an effort to educate me in their religion. Secretly, of course. Nominally, they were atheists,
but they celebrated all the old ceremonies: Passover, Rosh Hashanah, and so on. They even gave me a Bar Mitzvah;
there were twelve others present then, all masked, of course, so nobody would know who they were. Although I was
the only one who didn't know. Maybe they were afraid I'd turn them in. Rightly so. Not that I did or even thought of
doing so for a moment. I mean they were right not to take the chance that I would.
"But I went through the ceremony only to please them; I had no interest whatsoever or belief in perpetuating
their faith. I just wanted to forget about the whole ridiculous and tragic thing."
He was silent for a moment, then said, as if continuing aloud his thought and as if not addressing Broward,