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

She frowned. "No."
"I just thought that you should."
I was surprised when Nicole asked to go. My first inclination was to
say no; after all, her sympathies were clear. I said yes because I still
believed her to be a reasonable person who would be intellectually honest
enough to give both sides a fair hearing. I realize now something that I only
half understood then. I did not stage the debate for the world; I staged it
for my wife. I wanted her to see that her newly-reaffirmed faith was a
mistake. I wanted her to doubt because I could never believe. Although on
the surface our marriage continued as before, there was an underlying friction
that was slowly abrading the base of love and trust between us.
****
In addition to Nicole, the guests from AlienLine included Janet Trumbell, the
President of InfoLine, her husband Geoff, and two of InfoLine's corporate
lawyers. The rest of the party that boarded the plane at Andrews included
three edgy bureaucrats from State, our camera crew and the pro and anti
factions. The group had been kept to a minimum in the hope that if the debate
proved too controversial it would be that much easier to suppress. Once in
the air we were told that we were heading north to Hanscom Defense Force Base,
west of Boston.
Had I known the location ahead of time, I might have suspected a trap.
There are both civilian and Defense Force runways at Hanscom. The guests
remained on the plane while a squad of soldiers escorted the camera crew and
me to the bubbletent on the runway where the debate was to be staged. I did
not realize at the time that these soldiers were not the troops of the United
States Defense Force I had expected; they were members of the Massachusetts
Guard. We had landed at the civilian airport, not the military base. I had a
telelink show to produce; all I noticed were the guns and riot helmets and the
green uniforms. Two of the scientists have claimed that the soldiers who
escorted them wore Defense Force uniforms. It is a clear violation of law for
state militiamen to pose as federal troops. The Governor of Massachusetts
denied that his men switched uniforms. The Governor claimed that they never
identified themselves to us at all and therefore broke no laws. The Governor,
who took personal charge of the Massachusetts Guard that day, was a Purger.
All we had asked for was one alien. But when the airlock of the red
alien silo opened two bodies came out. One identified himself as Twisted
Logic. He introduced a banana yellow alien called Awful Truth who was to
argue the alien side. All the Purgers except Terry were apoplectic. "How can
she debate someone named Truth?" one cried. "It's not that thing's real name,
I tell you!" another thundered. "They make their names up to suit the
occasion." Terry just sighed her all-purpose sigh. "The Lord will speak
today, not me," she said, and managed to make that outrageous statement sound
humble. "He knows all the tricks of the devil." That shut them up.
It was about four in the afternoon when the tape started to roll. I
introduced them as Sister Theresa of the Brides of Christ and Awful Truth the
communist. The opening statements were predictable. Awful Truth gave the
digest version of the big bang, planetary formation, organic soup, life,
evolution, intelligence. He was more impressive than Twisted Logic, perhaps
because he did not giggle so much. I got the impression that he was the alien
version of a humorless fanatic, in which case he was well-matched with Terry.