"Mission" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)
'So doesn't that make us the chosen people?' I might have enounced all forms of religious faith but I still nourished the notion hat I and my Zionist brothers might have an edge on the rest of iumanity.
'What I meant was that you were mio longer the chosen people in the ~trict Biblical sense. I hadni't come just to save the Jews,' he said.
'But to redeem Mankind,' I concluded confidently.
'It depends on how you define Mankind,' he replied, lie clasped us hands together and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "lhe
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truth is, Leo, wh'tn I firs; got here you people were the least of my concerns. Jews, Gentiles - in my book, you were all expendable. My mission was to rescue our people. The twelve Am-folk who were inside you.'
'Inside us?' I said. I.d~n't know why, but the news came as quite a shock. ~Are you, trying to, tell me that the human race has been occupied by your peopW?.
'Yes~' he. said. "i'4~.~i~ where they've been hiding ever since Earth and the rest of this galaxy fell into enemy hands. Remember what I said about Michael and Gabriel resembling agents of the OSS? The situation here is analogous to your own recent past. The Second \X'orld War. The universe is like occupied Europe. ~I'he Am-folk are the underground resistance movement that we are helping to stay alive until the day of liberation. And it's the rebels, your new overlords, who are the Nazis, stamping their Sturm und Drang philosophy on the cosmos.' He sat back. 'You don't look too happy.'
I shrugged. 'I may get used to it but right now, I'm not too sure I like the idea of being taken over.'
He leaned forward again and looked at me intently. 'Leo, you haven't been taken over. The Am-folk are the human race. Your body is no more than a mobile life-support system. A vehicle in which they could shelter until the Empire was able to rescue them. \X1ithout them, you'd be just another race of termites. It is the Am-folk who provide your guidance system: the controlling intelligence of their earthly hosts. Note the plural. From the very beginning, they used groups of hosts. A few hundred at first, then several hundred, then several thousand. Just as the movements ofa shoal of fish appear to be directed by a group mind, so the host-bodies possessed by each of the Am-folk formed a cohesive unit. They provided him with a refuge from the attacks of the Secessionist forces the "evil spirits" of antiquity - and in return he used his powers and knowledge of the world to ensure their continuing survival.'
I nodded to show that I had understood, even though I was still not too sure how I felt about my newly-discovered role as a minuscule, misplaced cog froni a dismembered Celestial machine that lay awaiting the arrival of that Big Mechanic in the Sky. 'Am I right in thinking that this is where all those stories about guiding spirits, folk-gods and t lie soul of' a nation come from?'
- 'Yes,' he said. 'If you can bear with me, I'll explain how it happened. ( Mnditions weren't too bad when the Am-folk first went Into
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hiding but, as the rebels strengthened their hold on the world, the Am-folk were no longer able to exercise the same degree of control over their host bodies. As time passes - and we're talking here of~ millions of years - the situation got progressively worse. Galaxy' after galaxy fell into the hands of the rebels. Finally, they wrested control of the World Below from the Empire and began to change the nature of the physical universe.'
'Was this the change of wavelength you mentioned?' I asked. 'Yes. Man was forced to change moo. And in adapting to the new environment, he became totally enmeshed in the physical world. Enslaved by the pain 'and pleasure of a purely material existence. And, as 'Brax ground Man into the earth beneath his heel, the beleagured Am-folk began to give up all hope of rescue.'
'And it was no good them trying to break out,' I added. 'Because there was no way they could have got home.'
'Right. . . 'He paused and poured himself another glass of wine.
'Just one thing,' I said. 'Who is 'Brax?'
He sank half the glass before answering. 'The self-styled Lord of Chaos.'
'I understand you're related.'
He nodded wearily.
'Every family has one,' I said. 'In ours, it's my cousin Samuel.' I waited for a moment but he refused to be drawn.
'Let's get back to the war.'
'Okay,' I said. 'But how about a time-check?'
conscious.' He paused and took a sip of wine. 'And that brings us back to your question about folk-gods. It was the hidden memory of
this relationship that gave rise to the first primitive forms of religion and sacrifice. From the sub-conscious awareness of the Am-folk that lived within them came the idea of a powerful god-father figure. They recognised this as a psychic force which their enemies also possessed. By killing their enemies in battle, or by sacrificing captives, they believed they released trapped psychic power that would make their own god stronger. And because that life-power was believed to reside in the heart and the head, these came to be the favoured sacrificial offerings. And since their gods also had to eat, animals and other foods were provided in ceremonies that became increasingly elaborate. And as proof of their allegiance and knowledge that they owed their existence to him, Earth-Man made the ultimate sacrifice - specially selected members of their own tribe.'
'What happened to the Am-folk fragment when its host died?' I
asked.
it was released into a shadow world of nightmarish oppression
from which it could only escape by entering another new-born
human being.'
'But wait a minute,' I said. 'As I understand it, the spirits of dead people who speak through these mediums all say that they're happy and having a good time. There's a lady who claims that Beethoven and a clutch of classical composers are all hard at work writing music and that Bertrand Russell is busy revising his ideas about God.'
The Man shook his head. 'Don't you believe it. Like the kami that the Shintoists revere, there are a lot of disembodied spirit forces present in the World Below but they are not floating around disguised as historic figures from Eant h's past.'
I was struck by a sudden insight. 'You mean because - because of the simultaneity of time, Beethoven, Handel and all of these other guys are still alive. So these mediums who claim to be in contact with them must somehow be locking on to their creative subconscious. Is that it?'
lie nodded. 'You're on the right track.'
'Okay,' I said. 'I'll pick it up later. I .ei's stay with the i\in-folk.
'I'hey were in the process of forgetting who t hey were , . .
Yes.' lie dowiied sonic wine and took up the story again.
'Slowly, the bond bet ween each Am-folk I ragnient amid its host body
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deepened; became stronger through their shared experience. It niarked the beginning of an individual ~ense of identity. The birth of Man's ego. The rebels did everything they could to encourage it in an insidious attempt to blot out all memory of the Empire. But despite their efThrts, a dim awareness of belonging to a greater whole remained. A lingering memory of immortality; of another existence beyond the confines of Earth. This is why, throughout the ages, generation after generation of Men have turned their eyes to the skies, often without knowing why, and have yearned to be rescued. That's what lies behind Man's death wish. The desire to shuffle off these mortal coils. For despite all the efforts to destroy it, the f'lame of Truth endures. The inner knowledge of Man's true origins and destiny.' He paused and looked me right in the eye. 'The realisation that you and I are one, Leo.'
That was when I felt I needed a drink.
I got up and poured myself a stiff shot of bourbon and got some ice from the kitchen. I remember standing holding the open door of the ice-box, watching the cubes swirl around in my glass. To give me time to collect my thoughts. He had been right to warn me about George Lucas and Tщlkien. He could have thrown in Doris Lessing as well. The Man had just outlined the best scenario I'd heard simice Star Wars. It had an engaging plausibility but there was no wayl could prove whether any of it was true. I just had to accept whatever he chose to tell me. I was conscious oft his tug-of-war going on inside me. An eager, almost child-like credulity fighting a see-saw battle with this hard-faced, dismissive cynicism. Why had his words had such a disturbing effect on me? And what was it? Regret for lost innocence? A nostalgic memory of a simpler time, for ideals long discarded? Whatever it was I did my damnedest to bury it under a mountain of indifference. Once again, I asked myself the sixty-four dollar question: Why me? Why was he here? Why was he telling me all this? Had I gone quietly crazy? Was I going to wake up in a flowerfilled room to discover that everything I had seen and heard in the last eight days had been taking place inside mny head? Or was I dead? had I, like ihe central character in that story by Michael Frayn whose title I was unable to recall, been the victim of'trat'fic accident on the way to pick up Miriam at the Manhattan (Iencral? Was this (jod's way of breaking the news to me? Or was it 'I'he Man who was crazy? Or niaybe not even The Man at all but somue metaphysical I reak I rum
another star-system who, for opaquely alien reasons, had decided to take advantage of my guilt-laden Jewish consciousness by presenting himself as the Messiah?
I am telling you this to show you how my mind twisted and turned in an effort to get myself oIl the hook. It was all too much, and had come at totally thчwrong time. Listen - a two hundred million year war. The Black Legions. Atlantis. The news that we were the aliens. It's okay tos~eculate about such things in the privacy of one's own home but, even if it was true, there was nothing we could do about it. The Twentieth-Century-Flier might be rocking dangerously on the rails hum anyone who tried to stop the train would merely incur the wrath of his fellow-passengers. He and I might indeed be one but where did that get us? Life had to go on. Wasn't I due in court at eleven-thirty on Monday morning? Didn't I still have four depositions to read through? Was Resnick the Resolute going to ditch everything he believed in - fame, fortune and fornicatioё - because some bearded golden-eyed wine-bibber had taken the wrong turning on the way back to his starship? Goddamnit, it was only by accident he was here, anyway. He said that himself.
I closed the door of the ice-box, carried my drink back into the living-room and sat down with a resigned sigh. The better half of me knew the answers tomost of those questions, and the blanks were filled in later. I wasn't crazy and neither was he. He was The Man and he spoke The 'I'ruth. This wasn't a drugged fantasy or death-bed vision, this was really happening. But part of me had been dead, and had been brought to life by his presence. I sat there under his gaze and hoped fervently that the road he might propose to lead me down would not be as stony as the route he'd chosen first time around.
When I'd proofed myself against adversity with the aid of the bourbon, I took up the thread of our conversation. 'Just let me check to make sure that I've got this right. Are you saving that what I think of as me, is actually part of one of you?'
~Yes,' he said. 'It's your soul, spirit, psyche, or whatever you may wish to call it. The animus. The intangible essence which provides the life force. The power that enables you to express your humanity, as opposed to your biological f'unctions. The part of you which continues to exist after clinical death turns your body into pot-roast.'
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