"Ellison-TowardTheLight" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

whimper. And then I made a stop to it. I had come here to do a thing, and I knew
it would now be done because . . . nowhere in sight did another creature of
shimmering light appear. We had much to learn about traveling in time.

I went to the priest where he lay in his dirt-caked blood, and I raised his
head. He stared at me in wonder, as he had the first time.

"Who are you?" he asked, coughing blood.

"Matty Simon," I said. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

He smiled. "Mattisyahu's son, Shimon?"

I started to say no, Matty, not Mattisyahu; Simon, not Shimon. But I didn't say
that. I had thought he was one of the sons, but I was wrong. Had I been a more
knowledgeable Jew, I would have known: he wasn't the Kohane Gadol. He was a
Levite, from Moses's tribe; one of the priestly class; sent ahead as point man
for the redemption of the Temple; like Seabees sent in ahead of an invasion to
clear out trees and clean up the area. But now he would die, and not do the job.

"Put your seal on this cruse," I said. "Did the Kohane Gadol give you that
authority, can you do that?"

He looked at the clay vessel, and even in his overwhelming pain he was
frightened and repelled by the command I had made. "No . . . I cannot. . ."

I held him by the shoulders with as much force as I could muster, and I looked
into his eyes and I found a voice I'd never known was in me, and I demanded,
"Can you do this?"

He nodded slightly, in terror and awe, and he hesitated a moment and then asked,
"Who are you? Are you a Messenger of God?" I was all light, brighter than the
sun, and holding him in my arms.

"Yes," I lied. "Yes, I am a Messenger of God. Let me help you seal the flask."

That he did. He did what was forbidden, what was not possible, what he should
not have done. He put the seal of pure oil on the vessel containing half a log,
two riv-ee-eas, of long-chain hydrocarbon oil from a place that did not even
exist yet in the world, oil from a time unborn, from the future. The longer the
chain, the greater the binding energy. The greater the binding energy, the
longer it would bum. One day's oil, from the future; one day's oil that would
bum brightly for eight days.

He died in my arms, smiling up into the face of God's. Messenger. He went toward
the light, a prayer on his lips.

Today, at lunch in the Commissary, Barry R. Levin slapped his tray down on the
table across from me, slid into the seat, and said, "Well, Mr. Pretend Jew,
tomorrow is Chanukah. Are you ready to light the candles?"