"Ian Watson - Slow Birds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Watson Ian)

empty of any corpse. And the window was open.
So he hadn't killed Daniel after all. The boy had recovered from the
blow. Wild emotions stirred in Jason, disturbing his usual composure. He
stared out of the window as though he might discover the boy lying below
on the cobbles. But of Daniel there was no sign. He searched around
Atherton like a haunted man, asking no questions but looking everywhere
piercingly. Finding no clue, he ordered a horse and cart to take him to
Edgewood. From there he traveled all around the glass, through Buckby
and Hopperton; and now he asked wherever he went,
 "Have you seen a boy with red hair?" The villagers told each other that
Jason Babbidge had had another vision.



As well he might have, for within the year from far away news began to
spread of a new teacher, with a new message. This new teacher was only a
youth, but he had also ridden a slow birdтАФmuch farther than the Silent
Prophet had ever ridden one.
However, it seemed that this young teacher was somewhat flawed, since
he couldn't remember all the details of his message, of what he had been
told to say. Sometimes he would beat his head with his fists in frustration,
till it seemed that blood would flow. Yet perversely this touch of theatre
appealed to some restless, troublesome streak in his audiences. They
believed him because they saw his anguish, and it mirrored their own
suppressed anxieties.
Jason Babbidge spoke zealously to oppose the rebellious new ideas,
exhausting himself. All the philosophical beauty he had brought into the
dying world seemed to hang in the balance; and reluctantly he called for a
"crusade" against the new teacher, to defend his own dream of
Submission.
Two years later, he might well have wished to call his words back, for
their consequence was that people were tramping across the countryside
in between the zones of annihilation armed with pitchforks and billhooks,
cleavers and sickles. Villages were burnt; many hundreds were massacred;
and there were rapesтАФall of which seemed to recall an earlier nightmare
of Jason's from before the time of his revelation.
In the third year of this seemingly endless skirmish between the
Pacificists and the Survivalists Jason died, feeling bitter beneath his cloak
of serenity; and by way of burial his body was roped to a slow bird. Loyal
mourners accompanied the bird in silent procession until it vanished
hours later. A short while after that, quite suddenly at the Battle of Ashton
Glass, it was all over, with victory for the Survivalists led by their young
red-haired champion, who it was noted bore a striking resemblance to old
Jason Babbidge, so that it almost seemed as though two basic principles
of existence had been at contest in the world: two aspects of the selfsame
being, two faces of one man.
Fifty years after that, by which time a full third of the land was glass
and the climate was worsening, the Survival College in Ashton at last
invented the promised machine; and from then on slow birds continued to
appear and fly and disappear as before, but now none of them exploded.