"Mission" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tilley Patrick)

Miriam peeled the bandages ofF his wrists. There was no trace of the wounds we had seen on the previous Saturday. No scar tissue. Nothing. I've got to hand it to her. Her eyebrows went up a good inch but apart from that, she took it in her stride. 'Oh-kay. . . 'she said, in a detached sing-song voice. 'Let's have a look at the feet.'
I held my breath as the bandages came off. It was the same story. Nothing to show that an inch-square metal ~pike had been driven through both feet and then had torn the surrounding flesh as it had taken the weight of his exhausted bbdy.
'Move your toes around,' said Miriam.
As he wiggled his piggies, she flexed each foot in turn, gently probing the bone structure with her fingers. 'Mmmm, that's amazing,' she said. She glanced up at me. 'The bones that were smashed are all completely sound and back in place.'
'Yes, well, I guess they would be,' I said lamely.
Miriam got up ofT her knees. 'Uh - would you mind taking off your robe? I'd like to have a look at your back.'
He stood up, slipped his arms out of the wide sleeves and pulled the robe over his head. LTnderneath, he was naked apart from a loincloth made out of a strip of white linen. The brown skin covering his lean torso was unbroken. The hideous bruising and lacerations had disappeared, along with the ugly stab-wound just under the ribs on the left side.
'Incredible,' said Miriam. She shook her head in disbelief~ and turned him gently around so that he was facing her. 'You must tell me how it's done. It would certainly move things along at the Manhattan General.'
The Man smiled. 'It's easy when you have the Power.' He sat down on the edge of the bed and laid his hands on his knees, palms upwards. 'I.ook , . .
IfI had not seen it with my own eyes, I would never have believed it. his appearances and disappearances had been mind-boggling hits ofmagic but what followed was absolutely fantastic. A sharp dent appeared in the skin of' both wrists. line dent got deeper then
suddenly, the skin was punctured. ~1 ~here was only one way to describe it: two invisible spikes were being driven through his wrists. The wounds began to bleed. I felt sick but I couldn't take my eyes away.
Miriam fell down on her knees and grabbed his wrists, covering the wounds with her hands. 'Stop it - please!'
'It's okay,' he said quietly. 'It doesn't hurt. It's all in the mind. Take your hands away and you'll see what I mean.'
Miriam slowly let go of his wrists. She had blood on the palms of her hands but the wounds had vanished. The skin was quite unmarked. I stood there with a mouth like a goldfish, my mind reeling. From my passing acquaintance with the Book I knew that if he had only done half the things he'd been credited with it was clear that, even on a bad day, he could out-perform the combined talents of the AMA. But if, in his resurrected form, he could travel through time and pull strokes like this, he was unstoppable. There wasn't a man alive who could touch him. I'll never forget that small but telling demonstration of his power, or the look on Miriam's face as she knelt in front of him, brushing her fingers over the spot where the invisible spikes had punched through flesh and bone only seconds before.
He took her hands in his. 'Is it okay ill get dressed?'
\liriam nodded and got to her feet. She popped the discarded bandages into her black bag and gave me an odd look. Almost as if everything that had happened had been my fault. I suppose that after years of medical school and six years on the job it must be tough when you run up against your first cast-iron miracle.
Miriam headed for the door. 'I need a drink. See you downstairs.'
The Man pulled his robe back on. 'I didn't mean to upset her.'
I shrugged and did my best to sound nuatter-of-lact. 'All doctors are the same. They don't like being out-smarted by their patients. 1.et's face it, that was pretty spectacular.' It was more than that but I didn't go overboard. After all, there might be more to come. If so, I would need every superlative I could lay hands on. I showed him his room and the toilet just in case he might wish to use either; then we went downs t airs.
Miriam was sitting by the fire with her hands cupped round a glass thuat held enough vodka to put a Cossack and his horse under the table. I)rink usually makes her happy. This time, she looked a little subdued. But in view of what we'd just wit nessed it was understandable. We turned down the lights and sat around the flames and talked - mainly about ourselves. The Man was curious to know
where we were from, what we did and why, and how we had come to be together. Et cetera. With his ability to read minds he must have known what we were going to say. I can only think that he wanted to compare what came out of our mouths with what was going through our heads.. So Miriam and I laid edited versions of our life stories on him. Maybe he reached into our memories and gathered up the bits we left out. If he did, he was kind enough not to ask any awkward questions.
Eventually, we moved on from True Confessions to America in general and the global situation. We told him that it was a mess and that, sooner or later, things would have to change radically. The trouble was no one was sure that things would change for the better. The major political systems of both East and West were now recognised to be morally and economically bankrupt. And it was no good looking to religion for salvation. Of the two major faiths, the Christian church had been spiritually bankrupt for centuries, and oil-rich Islam was suffering from fundamentalist schizophrenia; Judaism you couldn't give away.
'Ask almost anybody,' said Miriam, 'and they will tell you that the world is going mad. But №obody believes in anything strongly enough to actually start doing something about it. Resolve has been replaced with resignation.'
I knew what she was talking about but I tended to take a more optimistic view. After all, people have been saying that the world was going down the tube ever since God told Noah to build the Ark. Despite what Henry Ford said about history it did, at least, prove one thing: man was the great survivor. When I pointed this out it made The Man smile.
'With a little help from his friends,' he said.
And that made her smile too. I gave her a 'whose-side-are-you-on' look then we broke it up and went upstairs. It was about one-thirty. Miriam sat on the edge of the bed and listened attentively as I described his arrival, re-capped our opening dialogue and played back the recorded highlights. She listened with rapt attention for a good hour then switched off with a series of yawns like open manhole covers.
'Sorry,' she said. 'I had a tough day at the hospital.'
'I)on't apologise,' I said. 'I'd like to sleep on it too.' I climbed into bed. 'At least you know now I wasn't kidding about the wine.'
'Okay, so you were right about that,' she said. 'It's just that some-
times your jokes are in rather bad taste.'
That made me sit up. 'Look,' I said, 'there's something we ought to get straightened out. This is a very laid-back guy we've got here. Okay, he's special. Some kind of spaceman, perhaps. I can even buy the idea that he may really be the Son of God. But he also spent a good bit of his time whooping it up with debt-collectors, hookers and guys who'd jumped schule -She put her hand over my mouth.
I pulled it away. 'Will you let me finish? The point is, I've never talked to a god before. 'Fhe only way I can handle this situation is to treat our friend down the hall like a normal human being. And I advise you to do the same, otherwise they are going to ship us to the banana factory.'
'Okay.' She kissed me tenderly. Somehow, only our lips touched. I decided to push my luck. Let's face it. One way or another, it had been a pretty heavy evening. 'I'm going to ask him about that water into wine bit. If he could do a number on a couple of hundred thousand gallons from the Hudson River we could be in business. On the other hand,' I said, 'if he could turn it into oil . .
Miriam stood up. 'I'll see you in the morning.'
'Where are you going?' I said.
'You've got three bedrooms, haven't you?'
I couldn't believe it. 'Come on,' I said. 'This is ridiculous.' I grabbed her hand and kissed it submissively. 'Okay. No more jokes. May I drop dead if I ever laugh again.'
She gave me a hard-eyed look and relented. But when she finally came out of the bathroom she was wearing a nightgown. Something she'd never worn when we'd been in bed together. I sat up on the pillow with my arms folded as ~he got into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.
'There - . - satisfied?'
'Not quite,' I said. 'I'm waiting for you to get undressed. I was sort of hoping that you might feel like parking your mobile home next to nuine.'
She treated me to a smile that was ten per cent pity and ninety per cent malice. 'Put it on the slate, Resnick.'
She wasn't kidding either.
When I woke on Sunday morning, Miriam was already up. I
showered, shaved, put on a bathrobe, and took a peek in t he guest
bedroom. The bed hadn't been slept in. I almost broke my neck in my haste to get down the stairs. Miriam was in the kitchen, dressed in a plaid shirt, jeans and sneakers, with an apron on top.Her hair was pinned back under a headscarf, and she had the freshly scrubbed look of a sixteen-year-old.
'Where's The Man?' I said.
She gave me another absurdly chaste kiss. 'Relax. He's out on the porch. Why don't you get dressed and take him for a walk before we have breakfast?'
I helped myself to some coffee from the pot on the stove and went out front. It was a nice warm spring day. Maybe it was my imagination but there may even have been a church bell tolling somewhere. The Man was sitting cross-legged on a mat with his back against the cedar shingles which I'd had put on the walls to save me the chore of painting the old clap-boards. I remember wondering if the one-piece robe he had on was a replica or if someone had done a deal with the guy who'd won it at the foot of the cross.
'Hi,' I said. 'Is it okay if I join you?'
'Sure.'