"Ursula K. LeGuin - The Telling" - читать интересную книгу автора (Le Guin Ursula K)

buildings, flattening the huge black mountains up behind the city. Southward the rain-rough grey water of
the Sound, under which lay Old Vancouver, drowned by the sea rise long ago. Black sleet on shining
asphalt streets. Wind, the wind that made her whimper like a dog and cringe, shivering with a scared
exhilaration, it was so fierce and crazy, that cold wind out of the Arctic, ice breath of the snow bear. It
went right through her flimsy coat, but her boots were warm, huge ugly black plastic boots splashing in
the gutters, and she'd soon be home. It made you feel safe, that awful cold. People hurried past not
bothering each other, all their hates and passions frozen. She liked the North, the cold, the rain, the
beautiful, dismal city.
Aunty looked so little, here, little and ephemeral, like a small butterfly. A red-and-orange cotton
saree, thin brass bangles on insect wrists. Though there were plenty of Indians and Indo-Canadians here,
plenty of neighbors, Aunty looked small even among them, displaced, misplaced. Her smile seemed
foreign and apologetic. She had to wear shoes and stockings all the time. Only when she got ready for
bed did her feet reappear, the small brown feet of great character which had always, in the village, been a
visible part of her as much as her hands, her eyes. Here her feet were put away in leather cases,
amputated by the cold. So she didn't walk much, didn't run about the house, bustle about the kitchen.
She sat by the heater in the front room, wrapped up in a pale ragged knitted woollen blanket, a butterfly
going back into its cocoon. Going away, farther away all the time, but not by walking.
Sutty found it easier now to know Mother and Father, whom she had scarcely known for the last
fifteen years, than to know Aunty, whose lap and arms had been her haven. It was delightful to discover
her parents, her mother's good-natured wit and intellect, her father's shy, unhandy efforts at showing
affection. To converse with them as an adult while knowing herself unreasonably beloved as a child —it
was easy, it was delightful. They talked about everything, they learned one another. While Aunty shrank,
fluttered away very softly, deviously, seeming not to be going anywhere, back to the village, to Uncle
Hurree's grave.
Spring came, fear came. Sunlight came back north here long and pale like an adolescent, a silvery
shadowy radiance. Small pink plum trees blossomed all down the side streets of the neighborhood. The
Fathers declared that the Treaty of Beijing contravened the Doctrine of Unique Destiny and must be
abrogated. The Pales were to be opened, said the Fathers, their populations allowed to receive the Holy
Light, their schools cleansed of unbelief, purified of alien error and deviance. Those who clung to sin
would be re-educated.
 Mother was down at the Link offices every day, coming home late and grim. This is their final push,
she said; if they do this, we have nowhere to go but underground.
In late March, a squadron of planes from the Host of God flew from Colorado to the District of
Washington and bombed the Library there, plane after plane, four hours of bombing that turned centuries
of history and millions of books into dirt. Washington was not a Pale, but the beautiful old building,
though often closed and kept locked, under guard, had never been attacked; it had endured through all
the times of trouble and war, breakdown and revolution, until this one. The Time of Cleansing. The
Commander-General of the Hosts of the Lord announced the bombing while it was in progress, as an
educational action. Only one Word, only one Book. All other words, all other books were darkness,
error. They were dirt. Let the Lord shine out! cried the pilots in their white uniforms and mirror-masks,
back at the church at Colorado Base, facelessly facing the cameras and the singing, swaying crowds in
ecstasy. Wipe away the filth and let the Lord shine out!
But the new Envoy who had arrived from Hain last year, Dalzul, was talking with the Fathers. They
had admitted Dalzul to the Sanctum. There were neareals and holos and 2Ds of him in the net and
Godsword. It seemed that the Commander-General of the Hosts had not received orders from the
Fathers to destroy the Library of Washington. The error was not the Commander-General's, of course.
Fathers made no errors. The pilots' zeal had been excessive, their action unauthorised. Word came from
the Sanctum: the pilots were to be punished. They were led out in front of the ranks and the crowds and
the cameras, publicly stripped of their weapons and white uniforms. Their hoods were taken off, their
faces were bared. They were led away in shame to re-education.