"John Meaney - Sanctification (2)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Meaney John)

quietly: "No." She took a bite of her fruit, in near ecstasy at the
sweet
taste upon her tongue, and immediately regretted her thoughtlessness.
She
twisted the fruit in two, and placed one half firmly in the old
beggar's
hand.
"Thank you, daughter. Tell me, do you see the building at the end of
the
Boulevard? It is very far away, a green jewel of a building, and even
your
young eyes will need to strain to catch sight of it."
She strained indeed. Against the clear bright sky, many kilometres down
the shrinking perspective of the arrow-straight boulevard, she saw what
might have been a green speck with a dark spire reaching upwards. Not
to
disappoint the old man, she told him that she had seen it. Pleased, he
nodded and settled himself. Fruit juice now mingled with the other
stains
on his beard.
 "You know of the worlds of Man, that we inhabit vast tracts of the
galaxy.
Yet our vessels by themselves would take millennia to track between
those
worlds.
"By ourselves, impossible. But the Saints, they can move their thoughts
in
a blink, in the time it takes a wave function to collapse. Those of the
acolytes who achieve Sainthood have one Wish to make, and the wisdom
and
the discipline to make their Wish come true."
"Saints? I've heard of them. I thought they were just a story."
"They are a terrible story, but a true one. They seek the path to
deepest
enlightenment, to achieve oneness with the innermost depths of
reality."
"Who are they, master?"
"I am not your master, little one." The old beggar half-laughed,
half-sobbed. "Anyone can try to become a Saint. But for those who draw
near to that goal, the consequences of failure can be - not
insignificant." For a moment, he drew his hand across his face, where
his
eyes should have been.
Ashara did not see the gesture. She was peering into the distance,
trying
to resolve further detail of the mysterious emerald monastery, almost
lost
in the distance beyond the boulevard's end.
"I must go," she said, and left the beggar, now grown silent, to his
own