"Robert A. Heinlein - Revolt in 2100 (Collected Stories)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

in the Angels of the Lord, the personal guard of the Prophet Incarnate. At birth my
mother had consecrated me to the Church and at eighteen my Uncle Absolom, a
senior lay censor, had prayed an appointment to the Military Academy for me from the
Council of Elders.
West Point had suited me. Oh, I had joined in the usual griping among classmates, the
almost ritualistic complaining common to all military life, but truthfully I enjoyed the
monastic routine-up at five, two hours of prayers and meditation, then classes and
lectures in the endless subjects of a military education, strategy and tactics, theology,
mob psychology, basic miracles. In. the afternoons we practiced with vortex guns and
blasters, drilled with tanks, and hardened our bodies with exercise.
I did not stand very high on graduation and had not really expected to be assigned to
the Angels of the Lord, even though I had put in for it. But I had always gotten top
marks in piety and stood well enough in most of the practical subjects; I was chosen. It
made me almost sinfully proud-the holiest regiment of the Prophet’s hosts, even the
privates of which were commissioned officers and whose Colonel-in-Chief was the
Prophet’s Sword Triumphant, marshal of all the hosts. The day I was invested in the
shining buckler and spear worn only by the Angels I vowed to petition to study for the
priesthood as soon as promotion to captain made me eligible.
But this night, months later, though my buckler was still shining bright, there was a spot
of tarnish in my heart. Somehow, life at New Jerusalem was not as I had imagined it
while at West Point. The Palace and Temple were shot through with intrigue and
politics; priests and deacons, ministers of state, and Palace functionaries all seemed
engaged in a scramble for power and favor at the hand of the Prophet. Even the
officers of my own corps seemed corrupted by it. Our proud motto ‘Non Sihi, Sed Dei’
now had a wry flavor in my mouth.
Not that I was without sin myself. While I had not joined in the struggle for worldly
preference, I had done something which I knew in my heart to be worse: 1 had looked
with longing on a consecrated female.
Please understand me better than I understood myself. I was a grown man in body, an
infant in experience. My own mother was the only woman I had ever known well. As a
kid in junior seminary before going to the Point I was almost afraid of girls; my interests
were divided between my lessons, my mother, and our parish’s troop of Cherubim, in
which I was a patrol leader and an assiduous winner of merit badges in everything

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from woodcraft to memorizing scripture. If there had been a merit badge to be won in
the subject of girls-but of course there was not.
At the Military Academy 1 simply saw no females, nor did I have much to confess in the
way of evil thoughts. My human feelings were pretty much still in freeze, and my
occasional uneasy dreams I regarded as temptations sent by Old Nick. But New
Jerusalem is not West Point and the Angels were neither forbidden to marry nor were
we forbidden proper and sedate association with women. True, most of my fellows did
not ask permission to marry, as it would have meant transferring to one of the regular
regiments and many of them cherished ambitions for the military priesthood-but it was
not forbidden.
Nor were the lay deaconesses who kept house around the Temple and the Palace
forbidden to marry. But most of them were dowdy old creatures who reminded me of
my aunts, hardly subjects for romantic thoughts. I used to chat with them occasionally
around the corridors, no harm in that. Nor was I attracted especially by any of the few
younger sisters-until I met Sister Judith.