"C. J. Ryan - Gloria VanDeen 3 - The Fifth Quadrant" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ryan C.J)

through the suddenly silent streets. As quickly as that, it was over.

Gloria was suddenly aware of the sharp smell of burned hair.

She looked around and saw UlmaniтАЩs aide slumping backwards against the white stucco
wall of the building. Flames flickered along the torn sleeve of his garment and he stared in
openmouthed wonder at the inch-in-diameter trench of blackened meat that now grooved his
upper arm. Behind him, there was a smoldering hole in the wall.

Comprehension dawned, and Gloria slowly reached upward and ran her fingers through
the singed tunnel that had scorched through her thick blond mane, just above her scalp.

IтАЩve been shot in the hair, she thought. How very odd.




┬л^┬╗
GLORIA STOOD NAKED ON THE ALTAR BEFORE fifty thousand entranced onlookers and
an Empire-wide vid audience that would eventually number a trillion or more. As it was a
Visitation Day, everyone else in the cavernous Church of the Divine Spirit was naked, too,
including Archbishop Nesselrode, who stood next to her as he droned on and on and on. What
was there about religion, she wondered, that turned so many people into compulsive
blabbermouths? Instead of standing in silent awe before their conception of the infinite, why
did people like the Archbishop feel the need to heap platitude upon platitude until the stack
reached all the way to the heavens above?

The Spirit Herself, at least, had been relatively concise. Exactly eleven hundred and one
years ago, to the very hourтАФat this very spotтАФshe had made her first Visitation, in the middle
of what was then a soccer stadium. She had spoken for just ten minutes, and, in her six
subsequent Visitations, never more than fifteen. It made for a rather short gospel. In fact, the
Book of the Spirit was a remarkably slim volume for a document that had transformed human
history.

After centuries of bloody conflicts, many of them inspired by religion, the Spirit had
launched a new religion in the year 2117 that was now embraced by fully 70 percent of the
EmpireтАЩs population. It had been eleven centuries since the last religious war among humans,
and no Spiritist had ever sponsored a pogrom, crusade, inquisition, jihad, or witch-hunt. The
Spirit had made no miraculous claims nor offered magical spells and incantations; she
demanded no extraordinary sacrifices and condemned only intolerance, greed, and stupidity.
She threatened no hell and promised no heaven but the ones humans could make for
themselves. Her gospel was gentle, worldly, even sensuous.

The Universal Church of the Spirit had grown in the wake of her Visitations and was now
centered here, at the Mother Church in Rio de Janeiro. The church itself was one of the largest
buildings on Earth, its main spire soaring nearly a kilometer above the rotating, circular altar
where Gloria now stood, surrounded by legions of the faithful. She had come here today, in
spite of many misgivings, to be honored for her life and her workтАФfor her personification of
the ideals and values espoused by the Spirit Herself.