"Robert A. Heinlein - If this goes on" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

know about it-or can guess-I want to hear. It’s important to me.’
‚Easy now! You were afraid of shocking me; it could be that I don’t want to
shock you.’
‚What do you mean? Tell me!’
‚Easy, I said. We’re out strolling, remember, without a care in the world,
talking about our butterfly collections and wondering if we’ll have stewed beef
again for dinner tonight.’
Still fuming, I let him take me along with him. He went on more quietly, ‚John,
you obviously aren’t the type to learn things just by keeping your ear to the
ground-and you’ve not yet studied any of the Inner Mysteries, now have
you?’
‚You know I haven’t. The psych classification officer hasn’t cleared me for the
course. I don’t know why.’
‚I should have let you read some of the installments while I was boning it. No,
that was before you graduated. Too bad, for they explain things in much
more delicate language than I know how to use-and justify every bit of it
thoroughly, if you care for the dialectics of religious theory. John, what is your
notion of the duties of the Virgins?’
‚Why, they wait on him, and cook his food, and so forth.’
‚They surely do. And so forth. This Sister Judith-an innocent little country girl
the way you describe her. Pretty devout, do you think?’
I answered somewhat stiffly that her devoutness had first attracted me to her.
Perhaps I believed it.
‚Well, it could be that she simply became shocked at overhearing a rather
worldly and cynical discussion between the Holy One and, oh, say the High
Bursar-taxes and tithes and the best way to squeeze them out of the
peasants. It might be something like that, although the scribe for such a
conference would hardly be a grass-green Virgin on her first service. No, it
was almost certainly the „And so forth.“’
‚Huh? I don’t follow you.’
Zeb sighed. ‚You really are one of God’s innocents, aren’t you? Holy Name, I
thought you knew and were just to stubbornly straight-laced to admit it. Why,
even the Angels carry on with the Virgins at times, after the Prophet is
through with them. Not to mention the priests and the deacons. I remember a
time when-‚He broke off suddenly, catching sight of my face. ‚Wipe that look
off your face! Do you want somebody to notice us?’
I tried to do so, with terrible thoughts jangling around inside my head. Zeb
went on quietly, ‚It’s my guess, if it matters that much to you, that your friend
Judith still merits the title „Virgin“ in the purely physical sense as well as the
spiritual. She might even stay that way, if the Holy One is as angry with her
as he probably was. She is probably as dense as you are and failed to
understand the symbolic explanations given her-then blew her top when it
came to the point where she couldn’t fail to understand, so he kicked her out.
Small wonder!’
I stopped again, muttering to myself biblical expressions I hardly thought I
knew. Zeb stopped, too, and stood looking at me with a smile of cynical
tolerance. ‚Zeb,’ I said, almost pleading with him, ‚these are terrible things.
Terrible! Don’t tell me that you approve?’
‚Approve? Man, it’s all part of the Plan. I’m sorry you haven’t been cleared for
higher study. See here, I’ll give you a rough briefing. God wastes not. Right?’