"James Patrick Kelly - St. Theresa of the Aliens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

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St. Theresa of the Aliens
by James Patrick Kelly
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Copyright (c)1984 James Patrick Kelly
First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 1984

Fictionwise Contemporary
Science Fiction
Nebula Award Nominee

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So now they want to make her a saint. Her cult is spreading. Cures
are claimed. The Purgers are taking over the Church; they want one of their
own to be the first saint of the new century. The Congregation of Rites in
Rome has named an advocate of the cause to prepare a brief for her sanctity.
He has already asked me for an interview. I would rather talk to the promoter
of the faith. The priest they call the devil's advocate.
Terry Burelli -- Theresa to the mythmakers -- did not have many friends
while she was alive. I think it was because she was such a sad person. What
I remember most about her is the sigh. She had no need of words to sum up her
view of life. The sigh was enough. Even when she smiled it was as if she were
expecting a disappointment. I never heard her laugh out loud; maybe she
regarded humor as an occasion of sin. When she spoke in her soft, sighing
voice people worried she was about to cry. Then she would shock them with her
ferocious opinions.
My wife was her first cousin. When I met Nicole, she and Terry were
roommates at St. Mary's College. I thought them an unlikely pair; at the time
they seemed very different. Although both were attractive, Terry's beauty was
cool and sterile; she was about as watchable as a plaster Virgin. Nicole and
I would spend hours just looking at each other in wondrous silence. Both women
were small-town Catholics, yet while Nicole was fascinated by the great world
that the Church never mentioned, Terry was already building psychic walls to
protect herself from it. Terry was a politician; she became chairperson of
the local right-to-life chapter, forced the administration to blackout all
X-rated movies ordered from telelink by the film club, and helped to set up a
student-run soup kitchen in South Bend's slum. She dragged Nicole and me out
of our apathy on occasion, although we much preferred being alone with each
other to promoting her causes.