"Gentry Lee - 02 - Double Full Moonlight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lee Gentry)

[Scanned 04-18-04 version 1.0 By Coldspin. I did what I had time to as far as
finding OCR errors, but I am sure that many still exist. Please update verison upon
further proffing.]




Double Full Moon Night
By Gentry Lee

THE STUNNING SEQUEL TO "BRIGHT MESSENGERS"
SET IN ARTHUR C. CLARKS RAMA UNIVERSE




TO MY SEVEN SONES,
Hunter, Travis, Michael, Patrick, Robert, Austin, and Cooper,
WHO HAVE ENRICHED MY LIFE BEYOND MEASURE




PROLOGUE


IN THE THIRD decade of the twenty-second century a global stock market crash
precipitated a devastating worldwide depression known as the Great Chaos. Throughout
the world, the destitute flocked in thousands to metropolitan areas, desperately searching
for work and creating a homeless problem that overwhelmed the infrastructures of the
great cities.
In London, fear of uncontrolled anarchy prompted the city fathers to accept an
extraordinary proposal to care for the homeless. The Michaelites, a new religious order
dedicated to serving humanity following the precepts of the charismatic Franciscan
novitiate Michael Balatresi, martyred in June 2138, converted Hyde Park into a tent ciw
There, under the leadership of a twenty-four-year-old woman ordained as Sister Beatrice,
the unpaid, energetic sect members provided hope, training, and sustenance to as many as
ten thousand of the temporarily downtrodden.
During the bitterly cold winter of 2141, both Sister Beatrice and her Michaelite
apprentice Sister Vivien, a former high-class call girl who had experienced a lifechanging
epiphany during a chance late-night meeting with Beatrice on the streets of London, had
eerie encounters with glowing clouds of sparkling,тАЩ dancing particles of unknown origin.
Later, after Sister Beatrice was appointed Bishop of Mars and the two women had moved
to the red planet, they would convince themselves that the astonishing particle apparitions
they had seen were angels sent by God to strengthen their faith and dedication.
During that same winter of 2141, Johann Eberhardt, a thirty-year-old system
engineer responsible for water distribution and allocation throughout greater Berlin, also
had a startling encounter with a similar apparition of the sparkling, dancing particles that
always drifted about, seemingly at random, inside a glowing cloud of constantly changing
shape. Even though his busy life was burdened both by the dire financial straits of his