"Reed, Robert - The majesty of angels" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

"If you cannot find your seat," I call out, "take another. Take the first empty seat you come across. Please. You must be sitting and restrained before we can begin our voyage. Please. And make the children sit too. Your child, and everyone else's. We're bound for the same place. A shared destination. We must cooperate to make it an easy voyage."
I have a bright, strong voice. A voice worth hearing. But I need to be in many places at once, and my skills reach only so far.
Six billion people drop into some seat, adults taking responsibility for the young ones. Those left standing beg for help, and I do my absolute best, smiling as I do with every little part of my job.
People call me "the angel" fondly, with easy trust.
Finally, once everyone is sitting somewhere, I stand in front of my passengers. "Yes," I admit, "you have died. You are dead."
Tom sits in my audience. And Julianna has taken the seat beside him.
"Yet you obviously aren't dead," I tell them. "There is a network, a set of embedded and eternal machines that stretch throughout your galaxy. These machines do nothing but rescue sentient souls as they die, then transport them to a place where they will be safe and happy for all time."
In a stew of language, voices blurt out, "Heaven!"
"Call it what you will," I warn, using the same tongues. "Maybe you're right, yes. Your gods could have built the soul- snaring machines and the wormholes that we are going to use. Since I don't know who actually built them, every answer is valid to me."
That attitude rarely makes people sit easier. Yet it has the delicious advantage of being my honest opinion.
"I'm here to serve you," I promise, showing them my warmest smile. "To make your journey easier, I will do everything I can for you."
Always, a few men giggle in a vulgar way.
Not Tom. He sits quietly, dark eyes never blinking while thick hands wrestle nervously in his lap. He is a brown man with receding black hair worn as a ponytail. I touch his armrest and a glassy round screen appears in the air in front of him. "You may watch any movie or television program, read any book, listen to a favorite song, or if you wish, choose any moment in your own life and watch it replayed as your own eyes saw it, in full. The controls on your armrest will explain themselves --"
A hand jumps up.
"Yes, Quincy," I say. "Do you have a question?"
The man is small and pudgy, wearing shorts and a tan safari hat, and he is thrilled that I know his name. "Do we eat?" Quincy asks. "Because I'm feeling awfully hungry."
"Any meal you can think of, we can make." I promise everyone, "I'll take your orders later. Though I should add, nobody needs to eat or drink anymore."
Another hand lifts.
"Yes, Jean."
She's a young mother with two tiny children. Custom and common sense have set her between her babies. Quite reasonably, she asks, "Will this be a long trip?"
"It will be, yes. I'm sorry, Jean. We have a tremendous distance ahead of us."
Tom makes a low sound.
I look at him. I smile, always. "Do you have a question, Tom?"
He lies, telling me, "I don't. No."
I won't press him. We have run out of time. Lifting my gaze, I stare at the grateful multitudes. "The infinity button on your armrest will summon me or one of my colleagues. Once we're underway, don't hesitate to press the button." Then before anyone can throw out another good question, I close my eyes, vanishing from their gaze.
Again I hear the word, "Angel."
Julianna says it with an easy reverence.
Tom says nothing. Nothing. He never saw the sky catch fire. He never heard the black warnings, the torrent of hard radiations and fantastic heat chasing after the light. As he was dying in the hospital, his family and friends, doctors and nurses, conspired to keep this one worry from him. Alone among my passengers, Tom was unaware. Innocent.
He's likely grieving for his dead world, a reasonable anger festering inside him.
"Our angel's beautiful," says Julianna. "Don't you think, Tom?"
He shrugs and says, "Very," while his hands continue to wrestle in his lap. He glances across the aisle. One of Jean's babies looks up at him, smiling gamely. Leaning low, Tom whispers to the wide-eyed three-year-old, saying, "Hey there, kid. Hey. So what about this whole crock of shit bothers you the most?"
The early vibrations are honest and important. Space and time are being manipulated by means both decisive and violent. Dimensions without human names are being traversed. For safety's sake, everyone must remain in his seat. No exceptions. Tiny variations of mass disrupt the intricate calculations, and our ship is cumbersome enough, thank you.
My team and overseer sit together.
As is customary, we discuss what has happened and what we can anticipate, the overseer nourishing a mood of cautious optimism.
You don't remember, she says to me. You haven't worked with humans long enough. But there was a period when we wondered if this was inevitable. Bringing all of them, I mean. Because they had some brutal weapons, and with a few buttons pushed, they would have killed most of their world.
I show her that I'm listening, thinking hard about what she's telling me. Then, letting my worry show, I ask, How do I respond to certain questions?
She knows which questions. Showing a narrow smile, she asks, Do you think they're likely to ask them?
No, I admit.
Haven't we taken the sensible steps?
Always, I say.
But make yourselves ready, she advises all of us. Examine your manifest. Don't let anyone catch you unprepared.
Easily said. But nobody mentions that each of us, standing alone on the grassy floor, is responsible for thousands upon thousands of souls.
We are successfully underway. People are encouraged to stand if they wish, and if they don't move too far, they may wander. A constant trembling passes through the floor, and from overhead a whispering roar comes, reminding them of a distant and irresistible wind. These are artificial sensations. They bring the sense of motion, of distance won. Sentience doesn't mean sophistication; humans would find the perfect stillness of interstellar travel unnerving, which is why we supply them with every comforting illusion.
Being sophisticated doesn't give me the right to think small thoughts about those who are otherwise.
That's what I remind myself as a thousand fingers call to me.
Wherever I am, I watch Tom. I listen to his voice and the voices swirling around him. In life, the man was a reader. He enjoyed a broad if rather haphazard love for science and mathematical puzzles. "Tell me what happened," he says to the English-speaking strangers. "What did you see? Read? Hear? And what do you absolutely know as fact?"
His neighbors have few facts to offer. But that doesn't stop some of them from declaring, "It was God's judgment, plain and simple."
Tom never listens to the plain and simple.
Others repeat the magical word, "Quasar," and shrug their shoulders. "That's what everyone says it was."
Tom explains his doubts. In clear, crisp terms, he teaches dozens of people about the universe and its brutal, amoral past. "Quasars are far away because they live in the deepest past," he explains. Then with grim urgency, he adds, "The part of the sky you're talking about doesn't have a big black hole. It's too close to us. We'd see its gravity at work. And even if something like that was hiding near us, there isn't nearly enough gas and dust to fuel the monster."