"Kelly,_James_Patrick_-_St._Theresa_of_the_Aliens" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)
"Pregnancy does that to you. Makes you think about what makes a life. Makes you think about dying. Luckily you don't have to worry, Sam. The aliens have already done all your thinking for you." She sat up. "Name the kid after yourself for all I care. Except that she's going to be girl."
I sat beside her. "I'm sorry, Nicole." I kissed her. "I don't know what I can do but I'm sorry."
* * * *
Perhaps if the aliens had given us the cure for cancer or a wonder grain to end hunger or the secret of immortality, they might have won people like Nicole and Terry over. I think what we wanted most from them was freedom from all the biological traps the earth had set for us. The aliens were not from earth; they did not understand our biology nor were they particularly interested in it. A new physics was their principal gift, an arcane and rigorous discipline that ran counter to common intuition. Who cared that they had a detailed mathematical model for the first three minutes of the universe? Or that they had developed from that a theory which linked weak and strong atomic forces, the electromagnetic spectrum and gravitation?
Of course, there was interstellar flight. Everyone expected a joyride to the stars. But the aliens could not just toss us the keys to a starship and wave goodbye. First we had to learn to control gravitrons and squeeze through the interstices in space-time. Then there was the difficult problem of life-support. It soon became clear that it would be years, perhaps decades, before the first ships would be ready. By the anniversary of the Sverdlovsk landing many Americans were disillusioned and bitter. Which was exactly what the rapidly-growing Purge movement wanted.
Purge. Sometimes a word will distort under close scrutiny, and its various meanings will twist back upon themselves. There are spiritual purges, purifications of the soul. Dangerously high pressures can be relieved by purging. Certainly there were some in the Purge movement whose goals were positive. Yet the word also has a bloody legacy of intellectual and religious intolerance. Purge trials. Popes urging crusades to purge the Holy Lands. Hitler's unspeakable purge. I think these dark connotations come closer to the essence of the Purge movement. And it was as a Purger that Terry Burelli came to the attention of the world.
Assassins stalked the aliens. Someone threw a bomb into the presidential reviewing stand during a parade in Buenos Aires. Twisted Logic got a new body and Argentina got a new dictator. A splinter group from the Purge Movement took credit.
Terry had the bad judgement to make one of her weekly telelink calls just after the news broke.
"Nicole's taking a nap," I said. "She's having a bad day and I don't want to wake her up."
"Is she all right?" The old black-and-white camera at her terminal made Terry look as if she had not slept in days. "What does the doctor say?"
"She's pregnant, Terry. It's hard work. Call back later."
"What's the matter, Sam?" She did her imitation of a smile. "Are you angry at me again?"
"At you and at all the other goddamned Purgers. Where in the Bible does Christ say you can go around blowing up your enemies?"
"We have nothing to do with those people, Sam. Sister Laura denounced them; I wrote the press release myself."
"Yeah, sure. And how much will the Brides be giving to their legal defense?"
"We deplore their tactics, not their cause. Certainly they made a mistake. We don't believe in violence, Sam. There has to be a better way to purge the world of ..."
"Goodbye, Terry." I was too disgusted to bother with the niceties; I had to cut her off.
Whatever the tactical disagreements within the Purge movement, all could agree that getting at the aliens to expel them was the major problem. They could intimidate the aliens' human collaborators. But the true enemies of the faith were safe within their well-guarded silos. How could they achieve their goal of purging the world of aliens? Terrorism and prayer proved equally unsatisfactory. Politics remained.
Pride was the key to their plan. Throughout the twentieth century Americans had believed themselves to be the most advanced people in the universe. Suddenly we were no longer first; that place was reserved for the aliens. Worse, we were not even second; with the aliens' help the Soviets had surpassed us. Wounded pride is intangible; you cannot build guns out of it. But with the proper manipulation of the facts, you can turn wounded pride into votes. The strategy was to purge the United States, then the other industrial states, the Third World, and then ... Then a Purger will smile with the confidence of one who is fighting the Lord's fight. It is not hard to see behind that smile to the inevitability of a Third World War with the Soviets.
AlienLine had to cover the Purge Movement. I wanted to expose them for what they were, but I was overruled. The Demographics Department was able to demonstrate that forty percent of our subscribers were either Purgers or sympathizers. Know thy enemy and all that. Since I was unable to match their propaganda with some of my own, I decided to let them indict themselves with their own words. God help me.
My idea was to stage a debate between an alien and a leader of the Purge movement. I fought for weeks to sell it to my own people at AlienLine, and then to top management at InfoLine. Finally I won permission to approach the State Department with the plan. I thought it might take several months to work out an agreement but State acted as if we were negotiating a nuclear disarmament treaty. I found out later that the Purgers in government were holding the project up for their own purposes.
* * * *
Nicole had a disastrous miscarriage her second trimester while I was covering the aliens' first visit to South Africa. I did not know until I found Terry waiting for me when I got home instead of Nicole.
"I want to see her."
I poured three fingers of Scotch and drank it neat. Terry watched me, her eyes alight with disapproval. I did not want to see her; I wanted to be with Nicole, to hold her and tell her how sorry I was. If Terry had had one milligram of the compassion that saints are reputed to have, she would have gone away to leave me alone with my guilt and sorrow.
"It doesn't matter that you don't like me, Sam." She worried the rosary beads that hung from the belt of her black habit. "I had to come; she had no one else."
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."
* * * *
It was summer before State finally let me approach the aliens with the idea of the debate. Maybe all the fourth of July demonstrations organized by the Purgers had convinced them that something needed to be done. Twisted Logic referred me to his superiors in Sverdlovsk; it took me several tries before I could convince an unenthusiastic alien named Final Authority. I had the impression that he did not much care about American public opinion. "If your people truly want it, we will leave your country. We do not need to be understood; it is you who need to understand."
According to my agreement with State, the debate was to be taped and the tapes submitted for editting by government censors. I soothed my conscience by vowing that if they butchered the debate AlienLine would not run it. To ensure security all human participants were to board a transport at Andrews Air Force Base and fly to a secret rendevous with the aliens. There would be a live audience of fifteen, five guests of AlienLine, five Purgers and five alien sympathizers -- scientists all as it turned out. They would be subjected to personal searches and liable to fine and imprisonment for disorderly conduct. It was not perfect but it was the best I could do.
I had not seen Terry since the miscarriage and had managed to avoid most of her telelink calls to Nicole. Nevertheless I had followed her career as Sister Theresa, a superior of the Brides of Christ and one of the more rational advocates of the Purge. She had introduced the idea of non-violent prayer marches to disrupt public appearances by the aliens. It seemed that every other week AlienLine was forced to run footage of some sweet little grandmother saying Hail Marys while being dragged away by stony-faced policemen. Terry had all the qualities that telelink loves in its newsmakers. She was attractive, she sounded sincere and she spoke in a kind of sloganese that was easy to understand. She was a master of the fifteen-second quote yet I was sure that if forced to speak at length she would stumble. For that -- and other reasons -- I wanted her to take the Purge side in my debate. Terry did not seem surprised when I asked her but then I supposed that State had leaked the idea.
"What format?" She was taking notes.
"Opening statement, five minutes. Twenty minutes of question, response, rebuttal, each side alternating. A three minute closing."
She sighed. "Not much time."
"If the ratings are good enough you can go at it again."
"You're a cynical man, Sam Crimmins. I pray for you sometimes."
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