"Destroyer - 019 - Holy Terror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Murphy Warren)

"When the young loudmouths started calling you Uncle Tom, you didn't mind. You knew they didn't have the balls to do what you did. Look down the barrel of a shotgun and order coffee, big man. They had the beads and the clothes and the raised fists, but you had God. Wonderful Titus Powell. I'll tell you what you're doing here. You came here to prove you're just the most wonderful nigger in God's kingdom. Well, you black bastard, you ain't getting your pride massaged with any shotgun here. You ain't gonna get martyrdom here. No lynch mob. You're getting what you've run away from all your life. So first, we get rid of the damned guilt."

A pricking sensation in his right arm and then a rushing surge of everything being all right filled Reverend Powell. His fingertips felt a tingle and his knuckles felt a tingle and his wrists were alive and calm as were his forearms. His shoulders that had known so much lifting in his life eased into beautiful floating joints, and his chest became like bubbles beneath the ice of a frozen, smooth lake. His legs melted into the floor, and he felt cool fingers apply ointment to his eyelids, and then there were stars, tingling beautiful stars. It was heaven he was in, and there was a voice. A hard, rasping voice, but if you said yes to that voice, everything was all right again. And the voice was saying he should do whatever the Blissful Master said he should do. The bliss continued for "yes" and ended with "no." Reverend Powell thought it might be minutes or it might be days. The faces above him changed, and once he thought he saw night through a very close window. In it all, he tried to tell God he was sorry for his pride and that he loved Him and that he was sorry for what his body was doing.

Every time this happened, Reverend Powell felt the bliss leave, and when he cried out Jesus' name, there was downright pain. His palms felt crushed with heavy needles, and he cried the name again. And his legs felt a snapping of bone and the crushing through of iron, and with the total breath of his lungs, Reverend Titus Powell cried out the love of his lifelong friend. "Jesus, be with me now."

And then there was a sharp piercing in his right side, and before the dark eternity of nothing, he thought he heard his very best friend welcome him home.

Maharaji Dor was at his electronic game, winning, when one of his priests told him of the failure.

"What do you mean, he's dead? He just got here."

"A week he's been here, Blissful Master," said the priest, bowing a shaved but sweating head.

"A week, huh? What did you do wrong?"

"We did as you prescribed, Blissful Master."

"Everything?"

"Everything."

"What do you know? Huh? Well? Huh? Does the government know about this? Any word from Delhi?"

"We have no word, but they will know. The passport office will know. The foreign office will know. The Third World representative will know."

"All right. That's 300 rupees right there. Anyone else?"

"The Third World representative will want more. While the Reverend Powell might have been a United States citizen, by virtue of his blackness he was also a member of the Third World."

"Tell the Third World representative that he's only getting the hundred rupees to keep quiet because what's his name had an American passport. Tell him if he had been African, there wouldn't even be a pack of cigarettes for him in this, dig?"

"As you command."

"How'd the twirl take it?"

"Sister Joleen?"

"Yeah, her, Jo whatever."

"She cried because she said she truly loved Reverend Powell and now he had lost his chance at bliss."

"Good. Get lost."

"I am still worried about the government."

"Don't be. There isn't anything 300 rupees won't buy in Delhi, and besides, we got the prophecy. They're worried about China. They're not going to hassle us. We're holy men, dig? And they can't pester a holy man in Patna. You'll see. The bread is just to keep things smooth. They really believe that bullshit legend."

"PONG, PONG, PONG." The machine suddenly moved without a lever being pulled. The blip circled crazily, and the glass of the screen rattled, and overhead the indirect lighting cracked out of the wall. There was sudden darkness and then flying glass, and the priest and Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor were tumbled like apples down a ramp toward the far wall, where they lay for hours until hands lifted them up.