"John Meaney - Sanctification" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meaney John)

eventually fell asleep side by side on the thin matting.

It was a year before Mark was ready to become a Saint. Neither Zenshara
nor Zhiang saw anything of him during the final weeks before the ceremony.
On that morning, they and all the other alpha-group acolytes dressed in
formal robes, and filed silently into the Great Hall. They knelt down at
the rear of the vast stone chamber, beneath its domed ceiling and sweeping
buttresses. They sat back on their heels and waited. Even for those used
to it, it was a posture which would become painful during the long hours
of the ceremony.
Teachers and Administrators sat on small stools to one side of the hall.
The focus was a wooden dais on which an emerald rug lay, the place where
Mark would kneel to make his Wish. There was no sign of him yet. Zenshara
tried to imagine what he was feeling right now.
There were archways along both sides of the hall, connecting it to the
side corridors. In each archway was a bowman, kneeling on one knee with
his tall asymmetric bow in front of him, already strung. The archers were
in light blue robes with ornate designs, and their bows were striped in
primary colours. They wore tall formal hats of black and gold, tied under
their chins with black ribbon.
Behind the dais, at the end of the hall, was a giant flat-screen display:
currently blank, a neutral grey.
The early part of the ceremony involved silent meditation, while eerie
dissonant music floated through the hall. For the kneeling acolytes, the
difficulty was ignoring the pain in their knees. Different Teachers stood
up in turn to recite poems or mathematical treatises. The Teacher who
spent most time with Zenshara was the last to stand. He talked simply, of
the history of the monasteries on all the inhabited worlds, and their role
in maintaining the social order while continuing the expansion of
humankind throughout the universe.
There was little ritual involved in the actual sanctification of Mark. He
was very calm as he walked in, moving majestically in rich black and green
robes, almost gliding across the floor to the simple dais. He stepped onto
it and knelt down upon the mat.
Two solemn boys brought him a golden goblet on a cushion. He smiled at
them as he took it and drank the contents. They backed away as he closed
his eyes and entered the trance, his face calm and peaceful. Behind Mark
the screen came to life, and showed the large colony ship floating in
orbit high above Wusaba, parked in black space. The picture must be
transmitted from one of the ship's own remotes, Zenshara thought. It
looked like an ornate toy. Hard to imagine that it contained a thousand
would-be colonists, eager to face the adventure of their lives, dreading
the other possibilities. The worst outcome would be failure to move, and
their ignominious return in drop-shuttles to the homes they had left
behind.
Not every Saint had the talent for visualization to transport such a huge
ship, though most did indeed use their Wish for some form of matter or
data transmission.
The archers fitted arrows to their bows. Gods forbid that they should be
necessary. A shudder passed through Mark's body as the drug cocktail took