"Jerry Oltion - Contact" - читать интересную книгу автора (Oltion Jerry)

Copyright ┬й 1991 by Davis Publications, Inc., All rights reserved. First appeared in Analog
Science Fiction/Science Fact, November 1991. For the personal use of those who have
purchased the ESF 1993 Award anthology only.



CONTACT

Jerry Oltion and Lee Goodloe

The bloody light of Reddawn spilled across the morning landscape. Lurid
shadows, black against red, stretched away from the gaunt trees limned against the
sky, and icicles flamed crimson as they caught the dim light. Overhead, aurorae
pulsated, dim with the coming dawn but still visible.
Old Phar, with the unconscious dexterity of long practice, began the Reddawn
ritual, necessary to forestall the Red One's power before the Truedawn, when the
Greatsun cleared the horizon. Breath steamed from his single nostril as he chanted
the ancient liturgy, pointing the wand down, then toward the zenith, then accusingly
at the Redsun peeking over the horizon. The motions and the incantions were so
familiar, it was as though he stood apart from himself and watched a mechanism
rattle thru its cycle, like a waterwheel clattering in an irrigation canal.
Like individual lives, he thought. Noisy, sometimes seeming purposeful, yet
always cycling, birth to death to birth...always moving, and always going nowhere.
Such a boring plan for a universe. If he'd been God he'd've done it differently.
He reined in his thoughts. Careful! It wouldn't do to be thinking such heretical
things now, routine ritual or no. He was no superstitious villager, to quake in the
face of a phenomenon that repeated itself so regularly and drearily, but neither was
he a fool. Those who blasphemed in thought eventually blasphemed in deed, and
that would go over especially poorly in a priest.
Besides, the ritual had to have come from somewhere. Possibly it was only the
time-dulled echo of a primitive tribe's fear of the unknown, but then again it might
truly be a necessary devotion to ward off the evil of the Red One. The potential for
disaster should that be so was vastly greater than the annoyance of performing the
ritual; therefore it behooved him to pay attention.
Even if it was boring in its repetition.
Stop that! he told himself sternly, but not before he had smiled at the thought.
He sighed. He was getting old, unable to keep a tight rein on his inherent evil nature.
He hoped the True God would take that into account when the time came for the
Final Battle.
A motion in the sky to his right caught his eye. Something bright. He glanced
idly to the south, expecting to see a meteor, but there was nothing. He turned back
to his chant. Motion again. He turned once more, this time looking more carefully,
and what he saw then almost made him drop the tools of his office. A star.
Moving! From the south. Moving steadily, arrogantly across the natural course of
the sky, heading due north.
Awestruck--undoubtedly this was a powerful omen, to so defy the order of the
sky!--he stopped the ceremony, his eyes fixed on the star. Stark terror tugged at him
as he waited nervously for whatever was to happen next. He mentally rued his
spiritual laxity the moment before, and prayed that the God would understand and
forgive. By now the Redsun had cleared the horizon, baleful and tiny, blanched on