"Hodgson-CanterburyPath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hodgson Fannie)

PAMELA D. HODGSON

THE CANTERBURY PATH

Sometimes fiction forces us to look at things in a new light. Science fiction in
particular can examine ancient beliefs and remake them -- and not always to our
liking.

Encyclopedia of Anglican Catholic History, Volume 3:

Elisabeth Altgeld, Anglican missionary, born 2111, Illinois, Earth, ordained
2137 (before the Anglican-Roman Compact of 2183 ended female ordination in
exchange for limitation of powers of the papacy; see article Vol. 1). Credited
with bringing Christianity to the Magellanic planets; little is known of her
specific activities, except that she spent most of her career on Kputkp, where
she died in 2150, possibly due to the famine of that year.

The insectile alien joined the group of Canterbury pilgrims, as the tourists
liked to be called, just before the tour reached the Martyrdom. The creature was
black, standing upright on two bug legs, with a ring of flexible appendages,
more gray than black, around its middle. The head had a maw of sorts, and what
were presumably eyes -- two round, spongy lumps on the sides of a bullet-shaped
head. From its neck hung a wooden crucifix.

Father George Morville nodded recognition at the alien, reluctantly, and went on
giving the tour, the quaver of age in his voice multiplying in the echo off the
marble pilasters. "This stone marks the spot of the Martyrdom of St. Thomas
Becket, December 29, 1170. All gather 'round, within the range of the
stimfield--" humans and others, three dozen in all, drew in closer around him,
"-- and we'll show you it, let you see and feel it, just as it happened,
seventeen hundred and twenty-three solar years ago." He checked his math; yes,
2893 less 1170, that was right. Memory was as bad as his eyesight.

The space around the group wavered, then reshaped itself. Over George's
shoulder, the 1184 A.D. choir, with its screen of stone statues, was replaced
with Anselm's Norman structure as it must have looked in 1170 when it was only
forty years old. Brown-hooded monks, heads deeply bowed, shuffled into the
choir, but still circumnavigating the clot of visitors. One of the tourists
reached out to tug at a coarse brown sleeve. She looked disappointed when the
image didn't react.

George gestured toward the arched stone doorway from the cloister. The tourists
turned to watch the silk-coped figure of Archbishop Thomas Becket hurry past
them into the transept, darting a glance over his shoulder. Behind them, the
murmur of Latin vespers rose like heat toward the vaulted roof. Before Thomas
could join the monks, four knights bolted through the door after him, their hard
shoes stamping like hooves on the stone floor. The monks' voices rose a little,
as if to overcome the profane sound. With one hand Thomas drew his cope tight