"Robert F. Young - St Julie and the Visgi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

SAINT JULIE AND THE VISGI
BY ROBERT F. YOUNG

The woodsman couldn't spare Julie's beloved old tree. Down it had to come. But the religious
tenets of an alien race, such as the Visgi, didn't bother little Julie . . . So she planted another tree
in Visgi soil!

THE VISGI were conquerors, but they possessed none of the characteristics usually associated
with conquerors. They were not cruel; they were not vindictive; they were not avaricious. They did not
plunder; they did not pillage; they did not exploit. The word "rape" was not even in their vocabulary.
They were conquerors because conquest was their religious raison d'etre.
The Visgi conquered Earth during the last years of the twentieth century, and the occupational
administrators moved into office immediately. The first thing they did was to issue the traditional Visgi
proclamationтАФa proclamation which stated in effect, that the moment a planet came under Visgi
dominion the inhabitants of said planet must institute a re-landscaping project for the purpose of altering
all surface features intrinsically different from the surface features of the planet Visge. For according to
the Visgi credo, Visge was the Model, the First-To-Be-Created, and it was the Prime Motivator's wish
that all other planets in the cosmos be patterned after the Model. That was why He had created the
Visgi, and that was why Visgi technology went hand in hand with Visgi religion.
Fortunately, Visge was not radically different from Earth. It had seas and continents. It had rivers and
plains and lakes and mountains and hills. It had a north and south polar cap and an International Date
Line. On one of its northern continents there was a peninsula that could have passed for Florida. Actually
there was only one intrinsic difference between Visge and Earth.
On Visge there were no trees.

JULIE woke to the metallic song of saws and the shouts of men. Looking out of her bedroom
window she saw the movement of denim clad bodies in the green foliage of the big maple, and sawdust
drifting down like yellow snow. She dressed quickly and ran downstairs. Mother was standing on the
back porch, her eyes very strange.
In the village below the hill on which Julie and her mother lived, maples and oaks and elms were
dying like fine brave soldiers, their limbs dropping one by one in the summer morning sunlight. But Julie
had eyes for her soldier only.
Her swing still hung from one of the lower branches. High above her head was the special bough
whose foliaged fingertips brushed her window reassuringly on windy nights when she could not sleep, and
just below it was the branch reserved for robins when they came north each spring.
"Mother," she asked, "what are they doing to my tree?"
Mother took her hand. "You must be a brave girl, Julie."
"But Mother, they hurt my tree!"
"Hush, dear. They're only doing what they have to do."
The first limb fell with a swishing sound. Sawdust flurried in the morning wind. Julie cried out and
wrenched her hand from Mother's. There was a big man in breeches and high-top shoes standing in the
yard, looking up at the men and shouting at them to hurry. Julie ran toward him, screaming. "You leave
my tree alone!" she cried. "You leave it alone!" She pounded his belt with her small clenched hands.
He grasped her wrists and pushed her away. His face was gray and there were dark smudges
beneath his bleak blue eyes. "Damn it!" he shouted over Julie's head, "isn't this job tough enough as it is?
Get her out of here. Get her out of here!"
 Julie felt Mother's soft hands on her shoulders. "I'm sorry," Mother said. "But she doesn't mean any
harm. You see, she doesn't understand."
"Why doesn't she?" the big man shouted. "She had it in school, didn't she? The Visgi held
deforestation classes in every school in the world. Kids are supposed to hate trees now."