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

year. I got the message; in '34 I left America, left Earth.
 And went to Halfway. At the time there was no PFK presence to speak of in space; there were not
quite two million people living off Earth at all, and the Peaceforcers were busy consolidating the
Unification on Earth; they had no time to bother with an ex-U.S. Marine who had very obligingly left the
planet.
My last conversation with Bear was so bitter that it took me a couple of years to forgive him. But
Bear held grudges with a vengeance; even after I'd decided to try and patch things up, he never accepted
my calls, and finally I simply stopped trying. Sometime in the mid- forties he left Earth himself--that or a
firing squad, as I understood it--ended up at St. Peter's CityState, out in the Belt. Back in the forties
there were still a couple of CityStates that were, putatively, loyal to the Unification; St. Peter's was one of
them. (As I recall, it was the next-to-the-last of the CityStates to break away from the Unification, in '54.
Only the White Russians held out longer; and by '56 even they could see that remaining as part of the
Unification made no sense for the CityStates.)
I don't know who was responsible for what happened, if anyone. At the time half the experts swore it
was a natural disaster, tidal stress or something equally unlikely, that destroying Europa was beyond the
technical capabilities of even the Unification; and the other half swore that from the little that remained
afterward, it looked as though Europa had been done in by a monster nuke, perhaps anti-matter, and that
it looked like a shaped charge.
I don't know. All I know is that on October 9, 2049, Europa blew and Ganymede caught a chunk of
it.
After the colony got smashed, Jamie Wellsmith came looking for me.
I had no idea who she was. Her brother Michael had been the colony's priest, and apparently Bear
and Michael Wellsmith had grown close. In Michael's last letter to Judith, he had written at length about
his friend Bear, the atheist Father Michael was attempting to save. Jamie had looked me up for the sake
of the ending to her brother's very last letter.
I've still got the hardcopy today:

--he's come to realize how his temper has damaged the people around him, how it's damaged his own
life. I've been after him to come to confession, and I think he's very near agreeing. I'm not breaking the
sanctity of the confessional by sharing this with you, since it was said to me while he and I drank together
a few nights ago; apparently Bear's older brother is Neil Corona, the young man who surrendered at
Yorktown. They've been estranged for fifteen years, and today Bear regrets their estrangement and feels
that it was largely his fault. I tend to think he's right; in dealing with Bear, I must often hold my tongue. He
takes offense too easily, realizes it slowly; and as a result spends much of his time apologizing for
incidents that took place a day or a week or a month prior. In his brother's case he was deeply hurt (over
what I am still not sure) and it has taken him all the years since to realize how deeply he, in turn, injured
his brother. Bear is a proud man; today he thinks that, after fifteen years, his brother must be so offended
at him that he would not appreciate Bear attempting to make contact again. I understand why Bear feels
this way; it's how Bear would react in similar circumstances. I hope he's wrong. In any event, we will find
out; when we return to St. Peter's next August, I think I will write to Mr. Neil Corona, and see what his
feelings are toward his brother, and possibly arrange a reconciliation.
At times I think my calling is a fiction, Jamie; something I've invented to give my life some meaning.
And other times I know it is not.
I remain, your loving brother,
Michael.

I read it silently; when I was done, Jamie Wellsmith demanded with tears in her eyes, "Well? Was my
brother right? Did you want to hear from him?"
She stared at me unwaveringly through her tears, and I said as steadily as I could, "I would have given
ten years of my life to talk to Bear again. He was the last family I had. He was the last person I ever