"Walter M. Miller - A Canticle For Leibowitz" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

a dedication is only
a scratch where it itches--
for ANNE, then
in whose bosom RACHEL lies
muselike
guiding my clumsy song,
and giggling between the lines
--with blessings, Lass
W

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
 To all those whose assistance, in various ways, contributed to making this
book possible, the author expresses his appreciation and gratitude, especially
and explicitly to the following: Mr. and Mrs. W. M. Miller, Sr., Messrs. Don
Congdon, Anthony Boucher, and Alan Williams, to Dr. Marshal Taxay, the Reverend
Alvin Burggraff, C.S.P., to Ss Francis and Clare, and to Mary, for reasons known
to each of them.


CONTENTS

Part I Fiat Homo 1
Part II Fiat Lux 111
Part III Fiat Voluntas Tua 223



Fiat Homo


1

Brother Francis Gerard of Utah might never have discovered the blessed
documents, had it not been for the pilgrim with girded loins who appeared during
that young novice's Lenten fast in the desert.
Never before had Brother Francis actually seen a pilgrim with girded
loins, but that this one was the bona fide article he was convinced as soon as
he had recovered from the spine-chilling effect of the pilgrim's advent on the
far horizon, as a wiggling iota of black caught in a shimmering haze of heat.
Legless, but wearing a tiny head, the iota materialized out of the mirror glaze
on the broken roadway and seemed more to writhe than to walk into view, causing
Brother Francis to clutch at the crucifix of his rosary and mutter an Ave or
two. The iota suggested a tiny apparition spawned by the heat demons who
tortured the land at high noon, when any creature capable of motion on the
desert (except the buzzards and a few monastic hermits such as Francis) lay
motionless in its burrow or hid beneath a rock from the ferocity of the sun.
Only a thing monstrous, a thing preternatural, or a thing with addled wits would
hike purposefully down the trail at noon this way.
Brother Francis added a hasty prayer to Saint Raul the Cyclopean, patron
of the misborn, for protection against the Saint's unhappy proteges. (For who