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

I said nothing.
"She told me everything, you know."
I poured myself another drink.
"I hope you're satisfied." I would have expected a malicious grin.
Instead there were tears.
"What do you want from me?" I cried, resisting the impulse to throw my
drink in her face. "You want me to slit my wrists?"
"That's the kind of penance a godless man does, Sam. I want you to
make your peace with Jesus, not with me. Stop leading my best friend into
sin."
I set my glass on the wet bar very carefully, as if it might explode if
I jostled it. "I'm home now," I said. "Nicole won't be needing you anymore."
I left her and went upstairs. I opened the door the bedroom and slipped onto
the chair by the bed. Nicole did not wake up. I spent the night staring at
her through the darkness. Terry was gone when we came down together the next
morning.
It would have been better for both of us, I think, had Nicole been
angry. If she had asked me to quit AlienLine, I would have. I owed her.
Instead she bore her misfortune with the quiet grace of a saint. She had lost
not only the baby but one of her Fallopian tubes and part of her uterus; her
gynecologist warned that another pregnancy might kill her. Yet she never
complained. She returned to her job. I tried to get home more often. Our
lives settled back into the comforting rhythm of work and play. With one
exception. Nicole started to go to church.
Not only Sunday Mass but every morning. St. Mark's was on her way to
school, she said, it was no problem. Yet for me it was a terrible problem.
In my guilt I thought at first that this was the punishment she had chosen for
me; I had no choice but to accept it. In time I came to realize that her
churchgoing had nothing to do with me and this was even harder to accept. She
was building a wall in our marriage, staking out private territory where I
could not go. She knew I would never be reconciled with the Church, especially
a Church run by Purgers. And yet she was no alien-hating fanatic; except for
the fact that she disappeared from my world for a few hours every week she was
still my love, my Nicole. We reached an uneasy compromise about religion.
"I don't want to argue, Sam." I could hear a hint of Terry Burelli's
sadness in her voice.
"I don't either, I want to understand."
"I believe in God. You don't. I'm not going to convert you so please
don't try to convert me." She would smile and touch my hand and I would shut
up. Most of the time. But because I worked so closely with the aliens I had
to ask her.
"What does it matter if we gain the stars, but lose our immortal
souls?" she said. "Do we have to accept everything the aliens tell us, do
everything their way, and forget about all the things that make us human?
Have you ever asked yourself what they are really offering? They want to make
us over in their image. We'll be reasonable, regulated,
technologically-advanced -- and aliens on our own world. And even if we get
to the stars we'll be second class citizens, the ones that had to be helped. I
don't need any of it, Sam. All I need is what God offers."
****