"Stross, Charles - A Boy And His God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Stross Charles)

A Boy and his God
Charles Stross

Once upon a time Howie had a god. It lived in the kennel where Juniper the mongrel had stayed until he died the winter before. Howie's mom Sophie was of the opinion that a pet god represented better value for money. After all, it didn't wake you up barking whenever the postwoman came by. And you didn't have to have a licence for one, either.
Howie was inconsolable when Juniper died. They'd grown up together, been playmates for all of Howie's twelve years, and though Howie never did learn to wag his tail Ц or Juniper to to do his sums Ц they understood one another perfectly. He sobbed and wailed and wept rivers when Juniper was run over, and sulked all March until Fred Phillips said to his wife, "Don't you think it's about time we got something to replace Juniper?"
Sophie Phillips rolled her eyes. "Pooper-scooper," she muttered; "flea powder, bath time, walks in the rain. Are you crazy?"
Do not be decieved; it wasn't that Sophie didn't like animals. She loved them; she'd been so crazy about Juniper that having to take him to the vet had broken her heart. It wasn't the worming and the whining that worried her, but the thought of going through the trauma of the accident again. Her husband realised this, and being who he was he waited impatiently until she pushed her reading glasses up the bridge of her nose with one finger, and Ц knowing that at such a moment she would be distracted enough to pay full attention Ц he asked the fateful question; "Yes, but why don't we get him something else? A god, for instance?"
Sophie looked at him questioningly, and in that moment of locked gazes they thought with one mind: and their thought was this. Hounds die on you, hounds need toilet training, hounds mean hassle; but household gods are trouble-free. What could go wrong with a minor deity?
She nodded significantly. "I think it's time we went for a little drive," she said, looking at Howie. Howie's eyes were downcast as he dug his spoon into his shreddies with a desultory action perfected long ages ago in the salt mines; Fred cleared his throat loudly, and Howie looked up.
"Your mother was speaking to you," said Fred. "What do you say?"
"Aw ... what?" Howie spooned another mouthful of cereal, playing for time. Sophie smiled tenderly at him. Fred was of the opinion that she spoiled Howie silly but he kept his mouth shut. Sophie had a degree in child psychology and Fred was in awe of it.
"Your mother said something," he repeated.
Howie shifted his gaze from the direction of the demonic abyss Ц which lay somewhere below the floor of his cereal bowl and somewhere above the planes of Hades, according to the Dungeons and Dragons book he'd got for Christmas Ц and refocussed on Mom's face. "Yo?" he asked, with all the charm and tact of a pre-teen bulldozer.
My, but they grow up fast these days, Mom thought admiringly, looking forward to adolescent sulks and no need to have to work at bringing him up any more. "We're going for a little drive," she said brightly, "your father and I agreed that it would be a good idea. It's about time, after all. Since Juniper ..."
"What?" Howie looked at her, spoon poised in mid air. A thin trickle of dirty milk dribbled back into his bowl as his hand sagged under the weight of his curiosity.
"It's time we took you to temple," said Mom. "We're going to buy you a God."
You sell pets through a pet shop, but for Gods you have to go to Temple. Temple was downtown, a sprawling great drive-in cathedral city that stank of incense and resounded with the noise of striking gongs, booming drums, chanting acolytes Ц recorded, of course Ц and human sacrifice.
The complex sprawled because you have to keep gods well apart. Being fiercely territorial, gods tend to fight violently and utter the most fearsome curses on sight of a potential rival; and besides, real estate was cheap downtown. They'd built minarets up either side of the entrance boulevard Ц very phallic, Sophie thought Ц and as she pulled the Toyota up at the gatehouse she shook her head and tut-tutted quietly to herself. Terrible, she thought, exposing little boys to such oedipal archetypes! What can the architect have been thinking of?
"Hiya," she called, head half out of the window; "Sophie Phillips and family. I phoned ahead, remember?"
"Pleased to meet you ma'am!" said the bronzed, grinning gatekeeper. "If you'd like to wait just a second we'll have one of our salesmen join you for your journey round our complex." He glanced over his shoulder. "Moon," he hissed. The smile slipped back into place with just a seconds' hesitation. "Minister Moon will be joining you presently, ma'am."
A door beside the window opened and a butterball oriental stepped out, face all glowing teeth and sunglasses above his hawaiian shirt. He walked round the car and Sophie unlocked one of the passenger doors. "Glad to meet you ma'am, name's Sunny Moon, but you can call me Sunny if you want! Hope you enjoy your visit here, have a nice day as well," he added, glancing nervously at her. Something about women in mirrorshades gave him a funny turn. He sat down gingerly on the other side of the back seat to Howie, who cast him a long, cool stare. Sophie nodded at the gatekeeper and slid the Buick into gear; then she moved off along the driveway.
"Here on your right we see the temple of the old Egyptian pantheon," Moon began, launching into his spiel. It was a huge, sand-weathered pyramid fronted by a temple. "All the way from Thoth the ibis-headed, especially good with academics and those interested in learning, to Osiris, god of the dead and judge of souls. Actually he's a bit patchy Ц ever since his rival Set chopped him into lots of little pieces and lost them all over the Upper Nile. Tell the truth," Moon added confidentially, "I wouldn't recommend any of this mob to you; they're a bit clannish and you'll end up with heiroglyphics all over the bathroom walls and stacks of mummified cats in the cellar." He shut up as Mom nodded and drove on; like many a salesman before him, Moon had mastered the art of sizing up his client and was seducing her with his apparent objectivity before the Big Sell.
"Over there we see Valhalla, hall of dead heroes and home of the Norse deities. This lot are especially good with Scandinavian buyers, but they do tend to drink a lot and party at odd hours. Midnight sun, you know. We had a few Hells Angels the other week who seemed to think Loki would make a good mascot for their chapter, but they got kind of annoyed when he cheated at pool. Anyway."
Sophie Phillips drove on, even when the road curled around an outrageous nipple-shaped protrusion covered in the most intricate mosaics. "Here we have one of the more abstract deities, a kind of second cousin to that Jewish Big God Person. You can't actually see him but if you adopt him you get to lead a horde of millions of fanatical followers. He's big on marriage Ц you can have up to four wives Ц " he looked at Sophie and backtracked hastily " Ц but you get your right hand chopped off for drinking and you have to pray to him five times a day." Mom glanced at him in the mirror and nodded, very slightly, as they drove on; Moon sweated. Howie slumped in the back seat, bored.
"Actually, most of the deities in this quadrant are a bit abstract for a kid," Moon chattered. "I'd think a young man like your son" Ц he actually looked at Howie for the first time since getting into the car Ц "would be more interested in something he could sort of relate to on a personal level. Now over here Ц yeah, you want to take this left fork and carry on there, yes, into the tunnel Ц we have a special deal this week. This is where we keep the Elder Gods. It's not so much that they're old stock as that most people want, well, something more familiar."
Sophie Phillips, to whom the words more familiar translated as more expensive, sat up straighter. The road disappeared into a hole in the ground, dropping smoothly until the raw stone arched overhead and covered them. There were no lamps; she switched the headlights on as she drove. The walls seemed to glisten with an invisible sheen of sweat, as if the weight above them was squeezing blood from the stones. This tunnel didn't look like a recent excavation; more like an ancient, dank, brooding gateway into some isolated network of caverns that had threaded the rocks under New England since long before European settlers first trod these shores. She removed her glasses, looked about, and sniffed. Birth tunnel experience, she thought. How Freudian can you get?
Moon, who had been silent for a few blissful moments, picked up his sales-pitch again. "Folks, you are now about to see the Elder Gods. This bunch are rather less sociably acceptable than some, they tend to slobber a bit and you've got to take care not to let them on the carpet. That said, an Elder God can make a faithful pet, an obedient servant, and a lifetime companion. Keep 'em somewhere shady in the back yard and water it when it doesn't rain. You won't get any trouble from rats or mice while you've got an Old One on the premises, and Ц "
He shut up as Sophie hit the brakes. The tunnel debouched into a monstrous cavern, the centre of which was occupied by a circular black pool. Dark tunnel-mouths led off in all directions. The halogen glare of the headlights cast great shadows which imparted an air of instant, brooding menace to the turbid waters that lapped at the nearside tyres. Something about the pool spoke of ancient evil, of things left undisturbed since before the dawn of time, of an aura of necrotic decay that accounted for the stillness of the air in some bizarre, twisted manner.
"Kill the lights", said Moon. Sophie complied. The darkness was not complete; overhead a myriad of toadstools cast their ghastly luminescence across the surface of the pond, reflecting like distant, unnameably ancient stars in a cosmos no human eye was meant to see. Moon wound down the window. "Cthulhu!" he roared. "Here Boy! Fish!"
Reaching into a pocket he pulled out something that glistened faintly in the ghost-light. He cast it far out into the pool, where it sank with a sickly plop that spread no ripples on the surface. "Squid", he whispered by way of explanation; "always brings him."
Fred clutched at Sophie's arm. "Is this wise?" he ventured. "I mean, if anything happened ..."
"No problem!" she answered determinedly. "They're chicken, are gods. Can't stand up to a determined atheist, not a-one of them. You'll see!" Howie sat up attentively and looked out the window. A smile began to tug at his lips; a smile of anticipation.
A ripple appeared on the surface of the lake, a ripple which rapidly grew wider and higher as if some unspeakable bulk was rising up from a slumber of aeons, deep on the floor of some miles-deep rift in the continental bedrock. There was an ominous breeze blowing, as if the very air was being displaced from the cavern; then something, shapeless and huge, monstrous beyond belief and twice as ugly, began to rear itself from the centre of the lake. Howie gaped at it in frank adoration.
Sophie took one look in her mirror and changed her mind. "Big sucker, isn't he?" she said; "bet there isn't room for him in our fishpond!" She slipped the Buick into gear with a jolt, and they disappeared off up the next side tunnel with Howie still struggling to control his disappointment.
Behind them, Cthulhu continued his monumental rise from his far-drowned bed. His spine was so tall that it took whole minutes for a command to travel the length of all those synapses; he often took so long to stop sitting up that he bumped his head on the ceiling. He saw twin red lights vanishing up a tunnel that his memory said led to the abode of his cousin Shub-Niggurath. Ponderously he swung his oversized, misshapen abomination of a head to look after them; tentacles drooped and squirmed from his pulpy lower lip as he examined Moon's squid, clutched in one unspeakable appendage. He shook his head. So long, he rumbled; cheapskates!
Eventually Sophie and Fred bargained their prodigal down to one Ц just one Ц child of the unspeakable Shub-Niggurath, father of the woods and eternal spawner of obscene life forms in his root-roofed cavern beneath the rolling green hillsides around Arkham City. It took dire threats and the promise of fish for supper every night for a week to forestall the promised tantrum and flood of tears that greeted Sophie's outright refusal to countenance a Cthulhu. Fred even threatened to buy Howie a beaming fat Buddha if he didn't behave himself; this latter threat seemed to do the trick. "That's cute," he spat as if the very suggestion brought images of saintly abstinence to mind.
"Here's your very own user-manual," said Moon, beaming as he handed Howie a leatherbound copy of the Necronomicon; "remember, Old Ones don't like sunlight, they need a plentiful supply of water and a bit of fresh blood from time to time, and don't let it get at the neighbours' daughter. You know, the girl next door? Good boy! Have a nice day!"
He continued beaming even as the sweating porters levered the tarpaulin-draped crate into the back of the car and Sophie signed the Amex voucher. His smile only slipped when he saw the happy family drive away. He shook his head dolefully. "There goes another one, Ron," he said. "Misers don't wanna know about the big stuff ..."
"Well hell, ya got to hand it to them," said Ron, propping his feet up on the desk and putting down his pen Ц Ron fancied himself as a writer of science fiction Ц "at least they took it off of our hands! Now you Ц" he jabbed his fingers at Moon Ц "when're you gonna take advantage of our staff discount scheme?" He winked, an affected nautical mannerism that irritated the hell out of Moon.
Moon considered. "Well, there's this contemporary goddess I've been thinking about recently," he said. "Name of Norma Jean ..."
The Phillips family arrived home and the installation of Shub-junior Ц or Junior as he rapidly became known Ц proceeded smoothly. Juniper's kennel was the obvious home, given Junior's glutinous propensities, and Fred insisted that Mom lay down the law before Howie could go play with his new pet.
"Remember," said Mom, finger poised before her face; "Junior's not to get on the carpet! Your Dad will have a fit if he sees goop all over the staircase, and he's not allowed in the kitchen either. You'll have to walk him at night; and remember you mustn't pray to him. That's almost as bad as sacrificing."
"Why can't I pray to him if I want to?" demanded Howie, staring up at Sophie and trying to figure what Junior would make of his new red skateboard.
"You musn't ever worship a God," she said; "it's very important. If you worship them they get more and more powerful until they start telling you to do unreasonable things. Once everybody worshipped their gods, and things were really bad. Only now we know better." She grinned with satisfaction, speculating about her son's need for a pre-adolescent bonding ritual.
Howie picked his nose, deeply puzzled. Surely you needed two legs to balance on a skateboard ..? "Yes, but if I can't worship my very own god, what can I pray to?" he asked.
"Conspicuous consumption," said Fred, backing into the kitchen with a heap of frozen microwave apple pies on a tray. "Gods all promise jam tomorrow; at least this way you get to have your cake and eat it!"
He laughed as he tied on his apron. "You just go play with your deity," he said. "Lunch in twenty, right?"
After their first ecstatic bonding, Howie and Junior were was as inseperable as any boy and god could be. On many summer evenings you could look outside after dusk and see the two of them bounding along the sidewalk, Howie weaving his skateboard from side to side and Junior racing to and fro across front lawns, gibbering and leaving a thin trail of slime in his efforts to keep up. Sometimes they swapped, and Howie would jog along huffing and puffing while Junior rumbled after him on the 'board. As they passed the neat white picket fences lining the road, hounds would bark frantically and cats would spit from the cover of bushes; but Howie didn't care. At school he would look at his fellow fifth-graders with a gleam in his eye; I bet your pet can't ride a skate board, he would sneer to himself. And it was true. This was a small town, and skateboarding elder gods were as thin on the ground as hang-gliding rabbis.
The summer recess stretched into a halcyon period of long, hot evenings and quiet, starlit nights. Sometimes during the early hours, Howie would be awakened by the noise of scraping from the back yard. Junior was quite smart for a deity, and had mastered the art of letting himself out whenever he felt like going for a midnight ramble. He was always back by dawn though, and nobody mentioned the matter unless Junior was careless and left a manhole cover open by mistake.
But the year rolled on towards autumn, and that September Howie was due to start sixth grade. He didn't want to go back to school Ц Aw, mom, Ц what kid does? But he had to.