"Joe Haldeman - Angel of Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

Angel of Light
JOE HALDEMAN
From Hartwell, David - Year's Best SF 11 (2006)

Joe Haldeman [home.earthlink.net/~haldeman/] lives in Gainesville, Florida, and teaches each
fall at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, MA, where he is an adjunct professor.
His first SF novel, The Forever War, established him as a leading writer of his generation, and his
later novels and stories have put him in the front rank of living SF writers. High spots among
them include Mindbridge, Worlds, The Hemingway Hoax, 1968, and Forever Peace. His story
collections include Infinite Dreams, Dealing in Futures, Vietnam and other Alien Worlds, and None So
Blind. His collection War Stories appeared in 2005. This was a particularly good year for
Haldeman's short fiction, with at least four first rate stories published.

"Angel of Light" was published in Cosmos, an Australian magazine. It is a really likeable
Christmas story about future Islam and pulp magazines and aliens, certainly an unusual
combination.

It began innocently enough. Christmastime and no money. I went down into the cellar and searched
deeply for something to give the children. Something they wouldn't have already found during their hajjes
down there.

On a high shelf, behind bundles of sticks waiting for the cold, I could just see an old wooden chest,
pushed far back into a corner. I dropped some of the bundles onto the floor and pushed the others out of
the way, and with some difficulty slid the chest to the edge of the shelf. From the thick layer of dust on
top, I assumed it was from my father's time or before.

I had a warning thought: Don't open it. Call the authorities.

But just above the lock was engraved the name. John Billings Washington. John Washington was my
father's slave name. I think the Billings middle name was his father's. The box probably went back to the
twentieth century.

The lock was rusted tight, but the hasp was loose. I got down from the ladder and found a large
screwdriver that I could use to pry it.

I slid the chest out and balanced it on my shoulder, and carefully stepped down, the ladder creaking. I set
it on the work table and hung one lantern from the rafter over it, and set the other on a stack of scrap
wood beside.

The screaming that the screws made, coming out of the hardwood, was so loud that it was almost funny,
considering that I supposedly was working in secret. But Miriam was pumping out chords on the organ,
singing along with Fa-timah, rehearsing for the Christmas service. I could have fired a pistol and no one
would have heard it.

The hasp swung free and the top lifted easily, with a sigh of brass. Musty smell and something else. Gun
oil. A gray cloth bundle on top was heavy. Of course it held a gun.

It's not unusual to find guns left over from the old times; there were so many. Ammunition was rare,
though. This one had two heavy magazines.
I recognized it from news and history pictures, an Uzi, invented and used by the old infidel state Israel. I