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

'You must let Miriam take a look at you. She'll be up here tomorrow.' I grinned. 'In the meantime, I'm supposed to keep you talking.'
He looked at me over the top of his glass. 'That's okay with me but I don't want to interrupt anything. I noticed you have a heap of papers on the table over there.'
'It's not important,' I said, not meaning it. After all, I thought, I didn't have to be in the office until Monday niorning and with any luck, he might be gone by then. 'Just make yourself at home,' I continued. 'I've got a big garden. There's a bike in the garage, a stack of hooks and colour TV. You might find that interesting if you want a quick up-date on what's going on.'
And if he got bored, there was always the chance that he might mend the rail around the v~andah, or put up a few shelves.
'Thanks,' he said. 'The problem is, I'm not sure just how long I've got.'
I received the news with mixed feelings. 'How do you mean?'
'I mean I'm not sure what's happening,' he said. 'As I understood it,! was supposed to he in Jerusalem.' He rubbed his forehead. 'What year did you say this was?'
'Nineteen hundred and eighty-one. I!' I remember correctly, certain religious historians put the date of the, er, of your death around the middle of March, twenty-nine Al).'
He nodded. 'The fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius.' He dropped his head on to the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. 'What a mess.' After a while, he raised his head and looked at me. 'You must he wondering what I'm talking about.'
I spread my palms. 'Look, I'm just an ordinary guy. 1 can't even begin to understand what this is about, or what it has to do wit Ii flue, arid I realise that you may not have time to tell me but we have to start somewhere. Let's go hack a week. What's the last t hing you
remember happening in Jerusalem?' -
He sat up a little. 'I was lying inside this rock tomb wrapped in a long strip of linen.' I Ic gestured with his hands. 'One half was underneath me, the other half was folded down over my head.'
Which was good news for fans of the Turin Shroud.
'I don't quite understand,' I said. 'How could you know about that? You were supposed to be dead.'
lie shook his head. 'No. It was only Joshua's body that had ceased to function.'
'Joshua's body?'
'Yes,' he replied. 'Joshua was the given name of my host-psyche. We both shared the same vehicle. The thing you call a body. To us, it's a mobile life-support system. It was really his.! just lived there. It wasn't an ideal arrangement but there was no alternative.'
Oh, boy, I thought. Wait till Miriam hears about this. 'Maybe we could come hack to that later,' I said. 'Okay, you were in the tomb. Then what?'
He shrugged. 'Tue next thing I remember is opening my eyes and finding myself lying on the table in the hospital morgue and you standing over me.'
'Wait a minute,' I said, 'What about the alleyway?'
He frowned. 'Alleyway?'
'The crew of a police patrol car found you lying naked in an alleyway on the east side ofManhattan. They called an ambulance, which brought you to the Manhattan General where several people, includirig Miriam, examihed you before your body was sent down to the morgue. Are you telling me you don't remember any of that?'
'No,' he said. 'Just waking up and seeing you.'
'Oh, come on,' I cajoled. 'You can do better than that. Try and think back. The ambulance that picked you up was stolen from outside another hospital about fifteen minutes before the police found you. 'l'he two men who picked up your body must have known you were coming. Who were they? Why did they bring you to the Manhattan General?'
He looked at me with the baflied frown of a man who did nor know what I was talking about. 'I'd like to help you, Leo, but I can't. As I've tried to tell you, I'm not in control of this situation.'
'( )kay,' I said. But ifyou do find out who was involved, I'd like you to tell me. It I'm going to he part of t his, I have a right to know wha(s goiiig on.'
31
'Absolutely,' he replied.
I had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn't levelling with me but what could! do? Some words came into my mind - What is hidden is hidden. Hadn't he said that? Whether he had or not, he held all the cards. The whole situation was so bizarre, the only course open to me was to play it by ear whilst keeping an eye on the nearest exit~ I resumed the interrogation. 'Where did you go when you left the hospital?'
He smiled. 'Back inside the rock tomb. This time, my two crewmen were waiting for me. My sudden disappearance had caused a certain amount of confusion. I explained where I'd been - or rather, where I'd found myself - then we made contact with the longship. We sent-Joshua's body through first, then the three of us were beamed aboard.'
I tried to keep a straight face. 'You mean like in. . .?' He nodded. 'Yes. Like in Star Trek.'
I had to laugh. 'How do you know about that?'
'From you. The images were in your mind.'
'It must be hard to keep a secret when you're around,' I said.
He shook his head. 'Not really. I've just got good antennae. I can sense that you're bursting with questions you want to ask me and I'd like to answer them but - ' He shrugged ruefully. 'It's not that simple.'
'You mean you can't describe the indescribable,' I said. Thinking
- Here we go. Thelassic cop -out.
He smiled. 'No. It's not a cop-out, Leo. As long as you are locked into the physical world you will never be able to comprehend mine. You communicate with other human beings through the spoken word, and it's possible to reach them on another level through music. But can you go beyond that? Can you imagine beings who use a form of language which begins where music leaves off? The answer is "No. You can't." Your brain contains censor blocks which prevent you from reaching this level of understanding. Man is capable of soaring flights of imagination but he can tiever fly high enough. That's why we have to come down to earth. But you must remember hat the Star Trek-Star Wars terminology is no more than a verbal shorthand to help you understand what I'm talking about. Because he only way we can communicate is by using words arid cOiicepts ,'ou are fiinuihiar with.'
'l.ike you did before.'
He smiled. 'Yes. But this time, I'll try and spare you the parables.' Reading this, you may think that I was handling the situation with an incredible amount of cool. Not so. My insides were quivering like Jehlo. But the truth was that, after the initial shock had worn off, The Man was a very easy person to be with. But don't misunderstand me. He was no pushover. And I was well aware that being around him could be bad for your health. The point I'm trying to make is this. You read about someone like him, or some other youthful overachiever like Alexander the Great and one gets a feeling of awe. But in the case of The Man, that feeling of awe is the result of two thousand years of relentless brainwashing by the people running the road show. Meeting him face-to-face was something else. Because, to all external appearances, he was just like any other ordinary human being. It was true he had the kind of eyes that could burn a hole right through you, but apart from that he was no more remarkable than any of the hundreds of people you pass every day in the street on your way to work. If the sky over Sleepy Hollow had split open in a blaze of light and I had been deafened by heavenly organ music, or a Stan Kenton version of The Last Trump, I might have felt differently but here he was, sitting on the sofa in my living-room with his feet up on the coffee table. Splitting a bOttle of wine with mc.
Respect? Sure, that was something I felt even though he had gone out of his way to make me feel at ease. Caution? Yes, certainly. Especially now that I knew he could read my mind. And also because I had no way of knowing what might happen from one minute to the next. A sense of wonder? Yes, that too, for the first fifteen minutes or so. You haVe to remember that I'd spent most of the week being amazed at what had happened the previous Saturday at the hospital. These days, things change so rapidly, people learn to adjust. And let's face it, awe is a difficult thing to sustain. Especially for a New Yorker.
'Let me try and get something straight,' I ventured. 'Does the fact that you went back to first-century Jerusalem when you disappeared from the hospital morgue mean that time is . . . ?'
'Simultaneous? Yes . - -
lust like that.
'I'he news was stunning. My mind couldn't react to all the implicatrons. I just accepted the fact meekly. 'So, does that mean that birth, life and death are simultaneous events?
"l'hat's right,' he said. In the sante way that the beginning, middle and end of'a hook exist between the I rout and hack covers - but you
only live your life story one page at a time.' He eyed me with a smile. 'Does that bother you?' -
~I'm trying not to think about it,' I said. 'Tell me about the starship.'
'You mean the longship? The vessel that came to rescue me?'
'Yes.'