"Robert F. Young - St Julie and the Visgi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

his face close to the ground, his eyes scrutinizing the soil. But his eyes only confirmed what his mind had
known in the first place: a quantity of Visge soil was always distributed whenever sizeable trees were
removed from hilltops.
He got slowly to his feet. His flat gray eyes had acquired a third dimension. He looked down at the
little girl. "You planted this?" he asked, pointing to the tree.
"Yes," Julie said, "and don't you dare cut it down!"
The local administrator stared at her, the Thought sinking its fingers deeper and deeper into his Visgi
brain. Abruptly he turned and began to run down the hill to the village. Julie had never seen a Visgi run
before and she watched, enthralled. She was still watching when Mother called from the upstairs window
and asked what was the matter. The local administrator had reached the bottom of the hill by then and
was hurrying up the village street toward his headquarters.

It was not a matter for a mere local administrator to handle, so the first thing he did when he reached
his headquarters was to call the Visgi resident governor and explain the nature of his insight. The
governor regarded him skeptically at first, his precipitate cliff of a face dark and foreboding on the
telescreen; but finally he agreed to investigate the matter immediately and directed the local administrator
to have everything in readiness for his official appearance.
The local administrator notified the officer of the guard without delay, and the officer of the guard
assembled a ceremonial detail in dress scarlet. Shortly before noon the detail marched militarily up the
hill, the local administrator in the lead. He was beginning to have misgivings by then, and the governor's
awesome face haunted him. Perhaps he had acted too hastily. Perhaps he had divined a religious motif
where none existed at all. Certainly the Prime Motivator's ways were complex, but did not their very
complexity make them all the more difficult of interpretation? And did local administrators have any
business trying to interpret them at all?
By the time they reached the top of the hill the local administrator was perspiring, but not from the
exertion of the climb. However, he surveyed the scene with outward calm while the officer of the guard
aligned the detail in two parallel scarlet rows along the edge of the seeded area.
Julie and her mother were standing together on the porch steps. The little tree was standing all alone
in the middle of the yard, its single leaf fluttering valiantly in the summer wind. Suddenly a shadow drifted
across the hill, and the local administrator looked up. The swallow-shape of the governor's ship showed
brightly in the blue sky and even as he watched it began to descend. "Quickly!" he shouted to the officer
of the guard. "Obtain the Terran child and stand her by the tree so that the governor can see them both
together!"

At first Julie was frightened, and Mother seemed frightened too. But after the officer of the guard had
explained what was about to take place, Mother said it would be all right for Julie to go with him.
Mother's eyes were very bright, Julie thought; they had not been that bright for a long time—not since
Father had gone away in the silver ship and never returned. Julie liked to see Mother's eyes that way and
she skipped happily along beside the big officer of the guard.
She stood by the little tree while the big swallow-ship came down, and she watched while the Visgi
with the awesome cliff of a face descended the spiral landing stairs. His entourage followed. There were
so many of them that Julie thought they would never stop emerging from the ship, but finally they did.
They formed in a group behind the governor, talking and waving their arms. They seemed terribly excited
over something.
The governor talked for awhile with the local administrator. Then he bent down and scooped up a
handful of reddish soil and examined it minutely. He looked over at Julie and the tree, his face still like a
cliff, but a cliff with the first rays of the morning sun just beginning to illuminate it. He walked across the
yard to the tree. The local administrator walked beside him and the governor's entourage followed.
 "See how sturdy it is," the local administrator said. "How green its foliage."
"As green as the hills of Visge," the governor said.