"Robert F. Young - The Quality of Mercy" - читать интересную книгу автора (Young Robert F)

perspective. I saw myself standing there in a crowd of children, a child myself, less vindictive
perhaps, but no less cruel than the other children.
"My inhumanity was refined and carefully rationalized, but it was no better than the
inhumanity of the warriors and the crowd. In a way it was far worse, for I was an integral part of
a complex operation the object of which was to rob an entire people of their birthplace.
Finally even the warrior with the lash realized that the condemned man was physically unable
to carry the cross and he impressed a man in the crowd to bear it. The column began ascending
the small hill, stopping without the walls of the city. Preith, M'naith and myself fell in behind it
with the rest of the people, and I noticed for the first time that there were two other men bearing
crosses. But these were totally unlike the first man. They were big, insensitive, brutal—and there
was nothing but the fear of death in their eyes.
"At the summit of the hill the column came to a halt.
“I am not qualified to record the scene that followed. There is a magnificence shining through
it that is far too transcendant for a man as simple as myself to put into words, especially alien
words. I am, not qualified to record it but I must record it, for if there be a particular task for
each human to perform during his life span, surely the task of writing the first Martian scripture is
mine.
"The two insensitive men were tied to their crosses and their crosses were raised against the
sky. He who had fallen was divested of his scarlet robe and his hands were nailed to the wooden
arms and his feet were nailed to the wooden shaft and a placard was hung about his neck; and his
cross was raised against a sky from which the blue had fled.
"The warriors look his robe and spread it upon the ground and began to cast white cubes
upon it. A silence settled over the land, broken only by the rattling of the cubes, the coarse
laughter of the warriors and the weeping of women. Three of the women stood a little apart from
the rest, looking up at the drawn gray face above them, and in their misted eyes there was a love
so vast that it radiated from them, enveloping the agonized figure on the cross in a gentle, almost
perceptible aura.
"None of us spoke, neither Preith nor M'naith nor myself. We stood there silently on the
hilltop, our mission forgotten, each of us nailed upon his own cross, staring up into the face that
was dying against the lowering sky.
"Time passed. A wind came up, a desert wind, but cold, and swept across the land.
"He cried out once in a feeble voice. One of the warriors glanced up, then, laughing, affixed a
sponge to a pole, wetted it from an earthen container, and held it aloft. The pain on the face
deepened as the lips touched the liquid, and the thin body writhed. The warrior laughed louder,
and his companions joined in, but their laughter was a small sound in the vastness of the
darkening day.
"I looked up into his eyes, marveling at the compassion that still shone from their depths, and
suddenly he saw me. He saw me and he knew me instantly: knew me for what I was, for what I
stood for; recognized me as a member of a race that was dying and that was too emotionally
immature to confront the reality of death.
"And his eyes filled with pity: pity for me, pity for my race; pity for all peoples who go through
life as children, whose psychological growth lags far behind their physical and technological
maturity. Shame overcame me then, and suddenly I understood the meaning of an ancient idea, an
idea which we have neglected for so long that we have nearly forgotten its existence—the idea of
humility ...
 "Presently his eyes left mine and moved over the crowd and over the city at the base of the
hill; and his lips quivered and words came, words that had no meaning to me then because I did
not understand the language in which they were spoken, words that had no meaning to the
barbaric Earth people either, for although they understood the language in which the words were
spoken, they were too immature to understand their concept.