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

'Okay,' he said. 'But first, you have to remember what I told you about word images. Because no matter how I phrase it, this story is going to end up sounding like a cross between a movie scenario written by George Lucas and Tolkien's Si/mars/lion.'
'Don't worry,' I said. 'I'll try and read between the lines.'
He paused and rubbed his forehead. 'I'm trying to figure out how to give you this without the trimmings.. . 'He sat up, put his glass on the table and his feet on the floor and used his hands to underscore what he was saying.'Three of us were sent here to make contact with a group of - let's call them "colonists" - beings like us that came to Earth a long, long time ago. There was no response to our signals on the way in, or after we'd gone into orbit so I came down with one of my crewmen to find out what had happened. The landing module - and remember these are your words I'm using -developed a malfunction on touchdown. As a result, the two of us were marooned.jhe second crewman, who was piloting what you would call the command module, went to get help. And that took about thirty earth-years to get here.'
The words came out as casually as if he was telling me how the car he was driving had stalled on the exit ramp of the Brooklyn Bridge on the way in to the office in Manhattan.
I tried to accept it in the same way. Even so, my eyes were like saucers. 'I see. So what does that make you - some kind of spaceman?'
'Not really,' he replied. -
'What are you then?' I said gingerly. 'An angel?'
He smiled. 'Don't let it worry you. I ct's just say that I'm from out there somewhere.'
'You mean from another galaxy?' I insisted.
He shook his head, 'No. From another universe.'
I nipped the soft skin olmy left hand with the thumb and f'orefinger of the right, digging in the nails until it really hurt. To convince mysehI~ once more, that I really was sitting there having this conversation. '['ham it was not just a dream. At t he back of my mind there
lurked the idea that some prankster might have popped acid into my jar of instant coffee. But on the other hand, I had had a reasonably sane conversation on the telephone with Miriam, and there were none of the sensory or colour distortions associated with a normal rip. I focussed my attention back on to what The Man was saying.
'. - - and so the crucial question was - what did we do until the rescue ship got here? The only way we could survive was by incubating inside a host body, like yours. Only there was no guarantee that we could escape from it unharmed.' He shook his head, remembermng~ 'The problems.. . I can't tell you.' He unclenched his fists and tapped his chest. 'You can't know what it's like to be trapped inside one of these things.'
'How could I?' I said. 'I've never known any other kind of existence. At least, not one I can remember. Was it bad?'
'Horrendous,' he replied. 'A thirty-year nightmare. And it stillisn't over.' He made a fist. 'They promised me. Go through with the Crucifixion, the Resurrection and that's it. Next stop home. Instead of which, I end up in the twentieth fucking century.' He saw the look on my face. 'I'm sorry. I guess I'm not supposed to talk like that. Your brain just went into spasm.'
I swallowed hard. 'Listen. As far as I'm concerned, you can say whatever you like. I just think you ought to know that there are a few words in my memory bank that are not meant to be used in polite company. They don't upset me but there are a lot of people around who have very firm opinions about you. And they wouldn't be at all happy to hear you talk like that - even though the Book says that you came on a little strong now and then.' I smiled at him. 'Maybe some of the flavour got lost in translation.'
'We lost a lot more than the flavour,' he said. He relaxed a little. 'But you're right. There were times when I got a little up-tight. I didn't realise how hard it would be to get through to people. But that hit in the Tenuple was special. I was trying to get myself'arrested. The vessel that had come to rescue me was in solar orbit between Earth and Mars. Just one of a whole fleet of ships strung out between here and the Time Gate. E~verybody was waiting. I had to get them to kill
me.'

My brain tried vainly to grapple with these new disclosures. Every lime he spoke, the cosmic canvas h~ was painting got bigger and bigger. I battened on to his last words. "s~hy was it you had to die?'
'Because ii was the oidy way I could escape from this hung.' lie
tapped his chest again. 'Joshua's body.'
'But why did someone else have to kill you?' I asked. 'Why didn't you just jump off a cliff? Or cut your wrists?'
He shrugged. 'Good question. All I can say is that was the way it had to be done. There were reasons. Let's leave it at that.' He poured out some more wine. -
I wanted to ask him what those reasons were but I decided to wait until he volunteered the information. After all, it was just a bare seven days since he'd been crucified and although his body had been miraculously healed, the event was clearly very much on his mind. I tried a slightly different tack. 'Tell me, if the main reason for the Crucifixion was to enable you to get out of your body, or rather, Joshua's body, why are you back in it now?'
'Ahhh, it's not the same,' he said. 'It's been - how shall we say - reconditioned? Unlike yours, it is no longer subject to the physical laws that govern Time and Space hut, apart from that, under normal circumstances it's virtually impossible to spot the difference. That was the whole point of the Resurrection. It was to prove that I had power over death. That I was able to come back as a fully functional, three-dimensional human being. But nobody warned me that time-travel was part of it. That's why I'm not sure what I'm doing here. When I found myself on that slab in the morgue instead of on board the longship, I was somewhat dismayed -'Dismayed?' I interjected.
He smiled. 'I'm thinking of my image. When I'd recovered from the surprise, my first thought was that there had been a technical hitch. Riding a beam is not the most foolproof method of transportation. But now that I'm back here again, I'm not so sure. 'i'hc odds against hitting the same time-slot as a result of' a malfunction are astronomical. I have a feeling that this may be another part of the mission they haven't told me about yet.' He shrugged. 'It wouldn't be the first surprise they'd sprung on me.'
'How do you mean?' I said.
'The breakdown of the landing module was rigged. I was dumped here. They broke the news to me about a year ago when the rescue fleet entered the galaxy.' He gave me a wry smile. 'Looking hack, I suppose it was the only way to get me to go through with it.'
I swallowed what was left in my glass. My firce must have shown that my brain was going into overload.
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'I guess it must be difficult for you to take all of this on board,' he
said.
'It is,' I admitted. 'We've barely started and already we've opened up several king-sized cans of beans. I just hope we're going to have enough time to go over some of these areas in more detail.'
'Maybe we will, maybe we won't,' he said. 'At the moment, I have no way of telling. Cross-time communication is possible but unless the longship knows exactly where Lam, we can't make contact. In any case, it's just acting as a relay station. The control point for this phase of the mission is on the other side of the Time Gate.' He paused. 'I think I just lost you again.'
'Totally,' I replied. 'I'm way in over my head. But don't worry.
Just keep going. I'll try and sort it out later. The exercise will be good~ for my brain. You mentioned this Time Gate before. What exactly is
-it?'
'It's the movable interface between your world and mine,' he said. 'Between temporal and non-temporal space. The secret door through which we enter and leave the cosmos. Which opens only for the brief moment of our passing then vanishes with its closing. Invisibly sealing the fabric of the physical universe which will never again be opened at that point in space for the rest of time. It is thus that the Empire is protected from the forces that seek to destroy it.'
As I listened to him, I was praying that he would hang around until Miriam got there. I wanted someone else listening in. Let's face it, this was pretty wild stuff. I knew that no one, in their right mind, was going to believe my unsupported testimony. On the other hand, after listening to us, they might throw us both in the nut house. I perceived a partial answer to my predicament. 'Uhh - would it be okay with you if we got some of this down on tape?'
'Yes, sure, go ahead,' he said.
I went to fetch the small IBM dictation machine that I carry around in my Samsonite, checked that it was working, and laid it on the table between us. Then I took a deep breath and started in again. I'd lost all count of time, and was hopelessly tangled in the various threads of the story. It was just too big to handle. In the end, I opted for the sinuplest question I could think of. 'Listen,' I said. 'Tluere's something Miriam wanted to know. What have you been doing all week?'
Frying to convince my friends iii Jerusalem that i 'in a real live person,' he replied, 'and riot sonic kind of ghost.'
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His eyes fastened on mine. 'But in spite of what you've said, you believe me.'
I wriggled uncomfortably under his gaze. 'Look, uh, I already told you. Religion's never been a big thing with me. Especially my own.'
'Religion is not what it's about, Leo,' he said. "l'hat's something you people dreamed up. What I'm concerned with is awareness.'
I grimaced. 'You may have trouble in putting that across. I hate to tell you this but, in the last twenty years, "awareness" has become one of the world's great clichщs. It's been exploited by all the wrong kinds of people.'
'I know,' he said. 'The other side has been busy.'
'The other side?' I ventured cautiously.