"Robert Charles Wilson - Julian- A Christmas Story" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilson Robert Charles)

penny copper. "I suppose I do."

***

That night, I lay in bed until I was reasonably certain both my parents were asleep. Then I rose, lit a
lamp, and took the new (or rather, very old) HISTORY OF MANKIND IN SPACE from where I had
hidden it behind my oaken dresser.

I leafed through the brittle pages. I didn't read the book. I would read it, but tonight I was too weary
to pay close attention, and in any case I wanted to savor the words (lies and fictions though they might
be), not rush through them. Tonight I wanted only to sample the book; in other words, to look at the
pictures.

There were dozens of photographs, and each one captured my attention with fresh marvels and
implausibilities. One of them showed—or purported to show—men standing on the surface of the moon,
just as Julian had described.

The men in the picture were evidently Americans. They wore flags stitched to the shoulders of their
moon clothing, an archaic version of our own flag, with something less than the customary sixty stars.
Their clothing was white and ridiculously bulky, like the winter clothes of the Inuit, and they wore helmets
with golden visors that disguised their faces. I supposed it must be very cold on the moon, if explorers
required such cumbersome protection. They must have arrived in winter. However, there was no ice or
snow in the neighborhood. The moon seemed to be little more than a desert, dry as a stick and dusty as a
Tipman's wardrobe.

I cannot say how long I stared at this picture, puzzling over it. It might have been an hour or more.
Nor can I accurately describe how it made me feel . . . larger than myself, but lonely, as if I had grown as
tall as the stars and lost sight of everything familiar. By the time I closed the book the moon had risen
outside my window—the real moon, I mean; a harvest moon, fat and orange, half-hidden behind drifting,
evolving clouds.

I found myself wondering whether it was truly possible that men had visited that celestial body.
Whether, as the pictures implied, they had ridden there on rockets, rockets a thousand times larger than
the familiar Independence Day fireworks. But if men had visited the moon, why hadn't they stayed there?
Was it so inhospitable a place that no one wished to remain?

Or perhaps they had stayed, and were living there still. If the moon was such a cold place, I
reasoned, people residing on its surface would be forced to build fires to keep warm. There seemed to
be no wood on the moon, judging by the photographs, so they must have resorted to coal or peat. I went
to the window and examined the moon minutely for any sign of campfires, pit mining, or other lunar
industry. But I could see none. It was only the moon, mottled and changeless. I blushed at my own
gullibility, replaced the book in its hiding place, chased these heresies from my mind with a prayer (or a
hasty facsimile of one), and eventually fell asleep.


3
It falls to me to explain something of Williams Ford, and my family's place in it—and Julian's—before
I describe the threat Sam Godwin feared, which materialized in our village not long before Christmas.[3]

Situated at the head of the valley was the font of our prosperity, the Duncan and Crowley Estate. It