"Heathen-God by George Zebrowski" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nebula Award Stories 7)

Compton's voice shook as he shouted, "What is this? Who the devil are you?"

A tall man immediately on the other side of the pool from them appeared to be the commanding officer. He wore no gear and there were no weapons in his hands. Instead he held a small piece of paper which he had just taken out of a sealed envelope.

"Stand away, Father, and you too, Sister!" the officer shouted. "This does not concern you." Then he looked down at the paper
in his hand and read: "Benedict Compton, you have been charged with conspiracy to overthrow the government of the Northern Hemisphere on Earth by unlawful means, and you have been tried and convicted by the high court of North America for this crime. The crime involves the use of an alien being as your coconspirator to initiate a religious controversy through a personally financed campaign which would result in your becoming the leader of a subversive cult, whose aim would be to seize power through a carefully prepared hoax. You and your co-conspirator are being eliminated because you are both enemies of the state." The officer folded the paper and put it back in its envelope and placed it in his tunic.
Chavez noticed that Sister Guinivere was at his side, and he could tell that she was afraid- Compton turned to Chavez.
"Father, protect the gnome, whatever he is. Use what authority you have. They won't touch you."
"The execution order is signed by Secretary Alcibiad herself!" the tall officer shouted.
Chavez was silent.
"Father, please!" Compton pleaded. "You can't let this happen." Chavez heard the words, but he was numb with surprise. The words had transfixed him as effectively as any spear. He couldn't move, he couldn't think. Sister Guinivere held his arm.
Suddenly Compton was moving toward the gnome.
"Shoot!"
The lasers reached out like tongues.
The little figure fell. And the thought went out from him in one last effort, reaching light-years into space. I loved you. You did not love me, or each other. They all heard the thought, and it stopped them momentarily. Compton was still standing, but his right arm was gone, and he was bleeding noisily onto the grass.
"Shoot!" The order went out again.
Again the lasers lashed out. Compton fell on his back, a few yards from the gnome. Sister Guinivere fell to the grass on her knees, sobbing. She began to wail. The soldiers began to retreat

back to their shuttle craft. Father Chavez sat down on the ground. lie didn't know what to do. lie looked at the two bodies. There was smoke coming from Compton's clothing. The gnome's hair was aflame.
The tall officer now stood alone on the other side of the pool Chavez knew that his orders had probably been sealed, and he only now felt their full force. After a few moments the tall officer turned and went after his men.
The alien knew this would happen, Chavez thought. He knew, and that was why he told us everything.

When the great disk of Antares was forty-five degrees above the horizon, Rufus Kade came out to theca. He put the two bodies in plastic specimen bags. Sister Guinivere was calm now and was holding Father Chavez's hand. They both stood up when Kade was finished with the bodies.
"They had an official pass from way up," Kade said. "I even checked back on it."
He walked slowly with them to the administration building. The shuttle to the starship was ready.

Thirty hours out from Antares, Father Chavez sat alone in his small cabin looking at the small monitor which showed him where he had been. Soon now the brilliance of the stars would be replaced by the dull emptiness of hyperspace. Antares was a small red disk on the screen.
Momentarily Chavez resented the fact that he had been a creation to the gnome. In any case the alien had not been God. His future importance would be no greater than that of Christ-probably less. He had been only an architect, a mere shaper of materials which had existed long before even his great race had come into being. But still-was he not closer to God than any man had ever been? Or would be?
The completion for which the gnome had made man would never take place now. The point of mankind's existence as he had
made it was gone. And the alien had not known God. If there was such a being, a greatest possible being, he now seemed hopelessly remote . . .

O Lord, 1 pray for a sign! Chavez thought.

But he heard only his thoughts and nothing from the being who would surely have answered in a case like this. And he had stood by while they killed the gnome there in the garden by the poolside, on that planet circling the red star whose diameter was greater than the orbit of Mars. Despite all his reasoning now, Chavez knew that he had stood back while they killed that part of the small creature which had loved humanity.

But what had he said? The rest of the gnome's being was humanity, and it still existed; except that now it would never be reunited with him. "Do not fear," the holy Antony had said three thousand years ago, "this goodness as a thing impossible, nor its pursuit as something alien, set a great way of: it hangeth on our own arbitrament. For the sake of the Greek learning men go overseas.. . but the city of God is everywhere . . . the kingdom of God is within. The goodness that is in us only asks the human mind." What we can do for ourselves, Chavez thought, that's all that is ours now: goals.

He took a deep breath as the starship slipped into the nothingness of hyperspace. He felt the burden of the political power which he now carried as a witness to the alien's murder, and he knew that Compton's life had not been for nothing. He would have to hide his intentions carefully, but he knew what he would have to do.

In time, he hoped anew, we may still give birth to the semblance of godhood that lives on in mankind, on that small world which circles a yellow sun.