"Kuttner, Henry - A Cross of Centuries UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

But it was the Day of the Messiah now, and Nerina, the only other immortal ever born, looked with reverence and love at the empty doorway through which Tyrell had gone.
She glanced down at the blue pool. A cool wind ruffled its surface; a cloud moved lightly past the sun, shadowing all the bright day.
It would be seventy years before she would swim the pool again. And when she did, when she woke, she would find Tyrell’s blue eyes watching her, his hand closing lightly over hers, raising her to join him in the youth that was the springtime where they lived forever.

Her gray eyes watched him; her hand touched his as he lay on the couch. But still he did not waken.
She glanced up anxiously at Morn.
He nodded reassuringly.
She felt the slightest movement against her hand.
His eyelids trembled. Slowly they lifted. The calm, deep certainty was still there in the blue eyes that had seen so much, in the mind that had forgotten so much. Tyrell looked at her for a moment. Then he smiled.
Nerina said shakily, “Each time I’m afraid that you’ll forget me.”
Mons said, “We always give him back his memories of you, Blessed of God. We always will.” He leaned over Tyrell. “Immortal, have you truly wakened?”
“Yes,” Tyrell said, and thrust himself upright, swinging his legs over the edge of the couch, rising to his feet in a swift, sure motion. He glanced around, saw the new robe ready, pure white, and drew it on. Both Nerina and Mons saw, that there was no more hesitancy in his actions. Beyond the eternal body, the mind was young and sure and unclouded again.
Mons knelt, and Nerina knelt too. The priest said softly, “We thank God that a new Incarnation is permitted. May peace reign in this cycle, and in all the cycles beyond.”
Tyrell lifted Nerina to her feet. He reached down and drew Mons upright too.
‘Mons, Mons,” he said, almost chidingly. “Every cen
tury Fm treated less like a man and more like a god. If you’d been alive a few hundred years ago—well, they still prayed when I woke, but they didn’t kneel. I’m a man, Mons. Don’t forget that.”
Mons said, “You brought peace to the worlds.”
“Then may I have something to eat, in return?”
Mons bowed and went out. Tyrell turned quickly to Nerina. The strong gentleness of his arms drew her close.
“If I never woke, sometime—” he said. “You’d be the hardest thing of all to give up. I didn’t know how lonely I was till I found another immortal.” -
“We -have a week here in the monastery,” she said. “A week’s retreat, before we go borne. I like being here with you best of all.”
“Wait -a while,” he said. “A few more centuries and you’ll lose that attitude of reverence. I wish you would. Love’s better—and who else can I love this way?”
She thought of the centuries of loneliness be had had, and her whole body ached with love and compassion.
After the kiss, she drew back and looked at him
thoughtfully. -
“You’ve changed again,” she said. “It’s still you, but—”
“But what?”
“You’re gentler, somehow.”
Tyrell laughed.
“Each time, they wash out my mind and give me a new set of memories. Oh, most: of the old ones, but the total’s a little different. It always is. Things are more peaceful now than they were a century ago. So my mind is tailored to fit the times. Otherwise I’d gradually become an anachronism.” He frowned slightly. “Who’s that?”
She glanced at the door. -
“Mons? No. It’s no one.”
“Oh? Well. . . yes, we’ll have a week’s retreat. Time to think and integrate my retailored personality. And the past—” He hesitated again.
She said, “I wish I’d been born earlier. I could have been with you—”
“No,” he said quickly. “At least—not too far back.”
“Was it so bad?”
He shrugged.
“I don’t know how true my memories are any more. I’m glad I don’t remember more than I do. But I remember enough. The -legends are right.” His face shadowed with sorrow. “The big wars.. . hell was loosed. Hell was omnipotent! The~ntichrist walked in the -noonday sun, and men feared that which is high. . . .“ His gaze lifted to the pale low ceiling of the room, seeing beyond it “Men had turned into beasts. Into devils. I spoke of peace to them, and they tried to kill me. I bore it. I was immortal, by God’s grace. Yet they could have killed me. I am vulnerable to weapons.” He drew a deep, long breath. “Immortality was not enough. God’s will preserved me, so that I could go on preaching peace until, little by little, the maimed beasts remembered their souls and reached up out of hell.. . .“
She had never heard him talk like this.
Gently she touched his hand.
He came back to her.
“It’s over,” he said. “The past is dead. We have today.”
From the distance the priests chanted a paean of joy and gratitude.

The next afternoon she saw him at the end of a corridor leaning over something huddled and dark. She ran forward. He was bent down beside the body of a priest, and when Nerina called out, he shivered and stood up, his face white and appalled. -
She looked down and her face, too, went white.
The priest was dead. There were blue marks on his throat, and his neck was broken, his head twisted mon
strously. -
Tyrell moved to shield the body from her gaze.
“0-get Mons,” he said, unsure as though he had reached the end of the hundred years. “Quick. This