"Daniel Keys Moran - Lord November" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moran Daniel Keys)

Bear laughed aloud. "This old fellow goes running into Church, ducks into a confessional, and says,
'Father, Father, I just made love to a twenty-year old girl, committed adultery with her twice. And the
priest recognizes his voice, says slowly, 'Abie...Abie Martin? Abie, you're not a member of my
congregation- -you're not even Catholic. Why are you telling me this?'"
Father Michael joined in with him on the punch line. "Telling you--I'm telling everyone."
"You know it."
"If it concerns priests, I've heard it. Usually from another priest. Did you make up those sins?"
Even through the paired layers of partially polarized faceplates, Father Michael could see Corona
hesitate a moment; then Bear's bushy beard moving from side to side, and Corona said in a voice gone
completely flat, "No."

"I thought you said the debris was going to miss us!"
"It was when we ran the first trajectories. They nudged one of the rocks." Adrienne Gordeau closed
her eyes briefly, looked wearily around at the people waiting for her to tell them what to do, wishing that
Bear, or Evans, or even the priest, were here to help her. Finally she said, "Father Michael is outside. I
think we must decide who's going to give final confession."

They stood uncertainly before the ship, watching, waiting for the emergence of the Dalmas, a
Missionary of the Zaradin Church, who had claimed to be inside.
The Dalmas did not emerge; instead the ship began to glow.
It began as a discreet thing, crawling like a viscous fluid along the interstices of the hip. Then it went
hazy, and flowed down into the empty vacuum, fountained down like a wave of mist towards the seven
waiting humans. The haze enveloped them, in a warm, golden fog that penetrated their pressure suits,
penetrated even Peaceforcer Evans armored scalesuit.
"Thy rod and thy staff," whispered Father Michael, "they comfort me." The warm fog embraced him.
"Thou preparest a table for me in the presence of mine enemies." The golden haze swirled around them,
and a bulkhead broke apart before them. The Presence drew them forward, pulling them like puppets on
a string. "Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over." He shook violently, the words coming
harshly, without rhythm or beauty. "Surely--"
Father Michael Wellsmith screamed suddenly, "God!"
For a brief cold second, the warm Presence was gone, and Father Michael stood straight and alone.
Then It flooded back upon him, smashed him down, and took him as It had taken the others.
Father Michael stumbled, found himself jerked back to his feet like a puppet, and he tumbled forward
with the rest of them, half-falling, a clown in Ganymede's gentle gravity. It did not bother him; nothing
bothered him, not the loss of his dignity or his freedom; not the trembling beneath his feet as the remnants
of a smashed moon came hurtling down to the surface of Ganymede, nor the darkness in the ship's hold,
nor the brief and improbably gentle acceleration as the alien ship lifted away from Ganymede's surface,
took him and Bear and Sheila and Peaceforcer Evans away from everything they had ever known.
He was wholly at peace with himself; after more than forty years as a Catholic, Father Michael
Wellsmith was going home.

Transcription of an Underground background interview with Neil Corona, 2090 Gregorian:

...Jamie Wellsmith and I had both lost family in the destruction of the Ganymede colony, back in '49;
it's how we met one another. My younger brother Bear, and her older brother Michael, were members
of the party, sent out from St. Peter's CityState, that was charged with establishing a beachhead on
Ganymede.
Bear and I hadn't spoken in better than fifteen years at the time. Bear was pretty high up in the Johnny
Rebs at one point; he kept after me to join through most of the late '20s and early '30s, in a series of
increasingly bitter arguments. In '33 the Peaceforcers tossed me into a Detention Center for most of a