"Jack Williamson - Afterlife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williamson Jack)

skipship lying in the cornfield where the stranger's craft had fallen. Another tall stranger
was poking into the tangle of tall weeds and rusted metal where it had stopped. He came
across the garden to our door.

When I answered his knock, he displayed a holo card that showed the bright round Earth
spinning in starry black space. Silver print across it identified him as a field inspector for the
Pan-Terran Police. Pointing back at the wreck, he asked for anything we knew about it. My
mother asked him to share our grits and bacon while we told him what we could about the
ship and the Agent and the Church of Eternity.

"We believed --" She broke into tears when she spoke of my sister's death. "We had seen
him risen from the dead. She trusted him."

"Satan!" my father rasped. "He dragged my daughter down to Hell!"

"He was a criminal." The inspector nodded in sober sympathy. "The tale he told you was
largely a hoax. It's true that he was a native Earthman, but no verons exist, no veronic
bodies either. Though he did have microbots in his blood, he had no skills or know-how to
share them with anybody else."

Sobbing, my mother rose to leave the room.

"Listen to him!" My father was hoarse with his own emotion. "The Lord will help us bear the
truth."

"A vicious criminal." Regretfully, the inspector shook his head. "But also the victim of
tragedy. He was the offspring of a mortal woman's illicit affair with an immortal. He inherited
his father's microbots. They should have been destroyed, but that would have crippled or
probably killed him. It must have been a desperate choice, but his mother kept him as he
was and kept his secret till he was grown. She was arrested when the truth came out, but
he escaped in his father's skipship. I regret the harm he did here, but at least his evil career
is over."

"Over?" My father stared at him. "If he is immortal--"

"His church officials will no doubt claim that he's still alive in some veronic paradise." The
inspector grinned. "But microbots aren't magic. They are only electronic devices. When we
located him here, we were able to shut them down with a radio signal. His natural body
functions had become dependent on the microbots. His heart stopped when they did.
"He will trouble you no longer."

"Thank you, sir." My father reached over the table to shake his hand. "You have served as
a faithful agent of the Lord."

"Or the Pan-Terran Police."

After breakfast, the inspector asked me to clear the weeds around the wreckage to let him
take holos of it. He walked with my father over our little farm and wanted to see the farm
tools and the mules in the barn. He looked at my mother's garden and asked about the
plants she grew. He had me show him the windmill and the water wheel and the grist mill,