"Bruce Holland Rogers - Vox Domini" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rogers Bruce Holland)

Vox Domini
by Bruce Holland Rogers
This story copyright 1993 by Bruce Holland Rogers. This copy was created for Jean Hardy's personal
use. All other rights are reserved. Thank you for honoring the copyright.

Published by Seattle Book Company, www.seattlebook.com.

* * *


In a canyon of blue sandstone, a man is digging a hole. It's a deep hole, long and narrow. It
could hardly be anything other than a grave.
There's a stream flowing nearby. Overhead, the sky is tinted orange with dust, with the color of
the setting sun. The wind is blowing hard up there. In this region of the planet, the wind always
blows hard at sunset. But down here in the canyon, at the base of these high blue walls, the air
hardly stirs.
There is no sound but the soft snick of the shovel cutting through the sand.
***


Mohr half opened his eyes when he felt Boursai wiping his mouth again. The cloth was cold and rough,
but Boursai was gentle with it.
"That's better," Boursai said. "Isn't that better?"
Mohr tried to turn his back on Boursai, but he was still too drugged, too weak. All he could manage
was to turn his head and face the other way.
The light coming through the open doorway was brilliant. The blue cliffs and canyons looked washed
out and unreal in the distance. There by the door were the remains of the yellow hexes, tiny cracked
shells like dead insects. And between the doorway and the cot where Mohr was lying there was the
still-damp spot where Boursai had tried to scrape the floor clean.
"Do you want some water to drink?" said Boursai. "It will wash away the bitterness from your mouth."
But not from my soul, Mohr thought. And then he thought to himself, Shut up. Stop thinking.
Mohr heard water trickling from one of the jugs, and then Boursai was in front of him again with a cup
in his black hands.
"Take it. Drink."
Mohr closed his eyes and gestured toward the door.
"Gabriel, drink it."
Mohr tried to lift his arms to tap a message into his wrist communicator, but he couldn't manage it. He
flicked his wrist impatiently toward the door again.
"I'll go soon enough, Gabriel," said Boursai. "But I must attend to some things first. You've been letting
things go around here." He held out the cup. "You need to take better care of yourself and your trees.
You've been neglecting your trees, Gabriel."
Mohr tried again to bring his right hand to the keyboard on his wrist. This time he managed to type in a
message by feel. Boursai leaned forward to read it. It said: "FUCK TREES."
"You don't mean that. They'll die. Your trees need you, Gabriel."
Mohr keyed in another message. It said, "GO AWAY. DONT CALL ME GABRIEL. GO."
"It's a good name," Boursai said. "It was the angel Gabriel who brought God's words to the prophet,
and..."
Mohr tried to tune him out. He didn't want to hear more talk of God and the prophet, and he didn't
want to hear his name again. Gabriel. His adopted name, the name the Catholics had given him. The
name for the fool who had wasted years and years listening for the voice of God. Gabriel. The name