"Kurt Vonnegut - The Sirens of Titan" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vonnegut Kurt)

The discovery of the chrono-synclastic infundibula said to mankind in effect: "What makes
you think you're going anywhere?"
It was a situation made to order for American fundamentalist preachers. They were quicker
than philosophers or historians or anybody to talk sense about the truncated Age of Space. Two
hours after the firing of The Whale was called off indefinitely, the Reverend Bobby Denton
shouted at his Love Crusade in Wheeling, West Virginia:
"And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
And the Lord said, "Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they
begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. Go
to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's
speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they
left off to build the city. Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there
confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon
the face of the earth.'"
Bobby Denton spitted his audience on a bright and loving gaze, and proceeded to roast it
whole over the coals of its own iniquity. "Are these not Bible times?" he said. "Have we not
builded of steel and pride an abomination far taller than the Tower of Babel of old? And did we
not mean, like those builders of old, to get right into Heaven with it? And haven't we heard it
said many times that the language of scientists is international? They all use the same Latin and
Greek words for things, and they all talk the language of numbers." This seemed a particularly
damning piece of evidence to Denton, and the Love Crusaders agreed bleakly without quite
understanding why.
"So why should we cry out in surprise and pain now when God says to us what He said to the
people who builded the Tower of Babel: 'No! Get away from there! You aren't going to Heaven
or anywhere else with that thing! Scatter, you hear? Quit talking the language of science to each
other! Nothing will be restrained from you which you have imagined to do, if you all keep on
talking the language of science to each other, and I don't want that! I, your Lord God on High
want things restrained from you, so you will quit thinking about crazy towers and rockets to
Heaven, and start thinking about how to be better neighbors and husbands and wives and
daughters and sons! Don't look to rockets for salvation — look to your homes and churches!'"
Bobby Denton's voice grew hoarse and hushed. "You want to fly through space? God has
already given you the most wonderful space ship in all creation! Yes! Speed? You want speed?
The space ship God has given you goes sixty-six thousand miles an hour — and will keep on
running at that speed for all eternity, if God wills it. You want a space ship that will carry men in
comfort? You've got it! It won't carry just a rich man and his dog, or just five men or ten men.
No! God is no piker! He's given you a space ship that will carry billions of men, women, and
children! Yes! And they don't have to stay strapped in chairs or wear fishbowls over their heads.
No! Not on God's space ship. The people on God's space ship can go swimming, and walk in the
sunshine and play baseball and go ice skating and go for family rides in the family automobile on
Sunday after church and a family chicken dinner!"
Bobby Denton nodded. "Yes!" he said. "And if anybody thinks his God is mean for putting
things out in space to stop us from flying out there, just let him remember the space ship God
already gave us. And we don't have to buy the fuel for it, and worry and fret over what kind of
fuel to use. No! God worries about all that.
"God told us what we had to do on this wonderful space ship. He wrote the rules so anybody
could understand them. You don't have to be a physicist or a great chemist or an Albert Einstein
to understand them. No! And He didn't make a whole lot of rules, either. They tell me that if they
were to fire The Whale, they would have to make eleven thousand separate checks before they
could be sure it was ready to go: Is this valve open, is that valve dosed, is that wire tight, is that
tank full? — and on and on and on to eleven thousand things to check. Here on God's space ship,