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

He shrugged at the shabby streets with a grimace of remembered pain.

"Poorer, because they have kept us down, generation after generation born to toil and die
in ignorance of all that might have helped us. To keep us humble, they have allowed us to
learn no more than our tasks required. Most have no escape except to breed another
generation to suffer and die as we have always done.

"I was lucky. My mother's husband worked as a janitor in a university that taught the
children of the rich. He stole books and holo cubes to let me learn at home. She was a
housemaid for an immortal scientist. They had an affair they never confessed, but my
mother told me I am his son. He made me his lab assistant when I was old enough, finally
made me his subject for the experiment that made me eternal."

I heard a buzz of excitement in the crowd, and then a volley of breathless questions.

"If you don't believe, ask those who saw me arrive." He paused to let his eyes search out
the doctor, the sheriff, me. "They saw my body heal from what they thought was death."

"I saw a dead man," the doctor muttered uneasily. "But I don't know how--"

His voice trailed off.

"I'll tell you how." The stranger smiled, and his voice pealed louder. "I bring you my father's
secret gift to me, something simpler than the microbots and a better way to immortality. It
has alarmed the old immortals, who have made laws and broken laws to keep the
microbots for themselves forever.

"They raided and wrecked my father's lab, left me for dead. I recovered. My mother
brought me the keys to his private skipship. I am not a pilot, but I had watched him drive
the ship. The robotic controls got me here, though I botched the landing and injured
myself."

Wryly, he gestured toward the twisted metal in the cornfield.

"You have seen how I recovered."

He spread his arms again and posed to display his body. Splendid now, it showed no
scars. I saw a flash of gold from his hair, now grown almost to his shoulders, and heard a
soft cry from my sister. Awe had hushed the crowd. Far off, I heard the rooster crow again.

"A child of God!" my sister whispered. "Here to save us!"

People stood frozen for a moment, then pushed anxiously closer. I heard a babble of
questions.

"Can you make me whole again?" That was the blacksmith's crippled son, caked with
smoke and sweat from the forge. "How can we repay you?"

"Just follow me," he said. "Do as I say."