"Robert Reed - Night Calls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Robert)

NIGHT CALLS
by Robert Reed

Although Robert Reed’s latest tale is clearly a homage to one of
science fiction’s most famous stories, inspiration for this piece
came from elsewhere, too. As Bob tells us, “despite what the outside
world might believe, little Lincoln, Nebraska, has a substantial
immigrant population. I once worked with Vietnamese refugees, and
a substantial group of Sudanese have lately come to town. There’s
also a strong Iraqi community. By some odd coincidence, I have
seen several young Muslim women having meetings with
boyfriends in the city parks. And at one of those big patriotic events,
my family and I found ourselves sitting with Iraqis, listening to
patriotic music while watching patriotic pyrotechnics. One young
lady had a blond, blue-eyed man-friend. He looked comfortable, but
only to a point. And I got interested in him and his situation. And
everybody was watching the sky.”

****

Ferrum was no Believer.

In that, he felt normal. This was an age when the powers of religion
were plainly on the run. The old temples stood empty, except for the rare
exceptions populated with worshippers embracing a thin, heartless
scripture. Much of the world seemed eager to mock superstition and ritual,
and every plaintive cry for God’s vengeance was conspicuously ignored.
Indeed, despite these heretical attitudes, modern life was abundant and
generous and often fat. The sciences constantly generated new
understandings and powers, each revolution delivered to all the races and
distant creeds. Yet if some supernatural punishment ever became
necessary, those same sciences promised more suffering than any Deity
sitting in the most perfect Heaven could deliver. Really, Ferrum could not
understand why any sober, honest citizen would entertain the preaching of
mad souls and charlatans. After all, this was the Day of those twin
Geniuses, Invention and Discovery, and hadn’t history proved that nothing
in the Creation was as half as powerful or a tenth as good as what was best
about people?

Yet Rabiah insisted on finding weakness in the fashionable disbelief.

“What do you mean?” asked Ferrum sharply. “What weaknesses do
you see?”
 “Start with your name,” she suggested. “It’s old, and it means iron.”

“I know what ‘Ferrum’ means.”

“To the ancients, our world was the obvious center of the universe.
And since what is heavy must sink, it was only reasonable to assume that
the world’s heart was made of iron and the rarer metals.”