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

"'Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
"His head dropped upon his breast. There was a sound of thunder in the distance—"

"Let's get out of here!" Tanner said. "Martian scripture isn't going to help us, even if it is written in
coined Greek, even if it does have the same theme as our own. We should be looking for food!"
"I'm afraid that this is the only food we're going to find on Mars," the captain said. "And in the last;
analysis it's the kind we need most." The hoarseness had left his voice and his torch had steadied. "Read
the rest of it, Binns," he said.
"There isn't much more, sir—"

“—and the approaching storm cast a sickly shadow over the land.
"On the hilltop all was motionless. The crosses, with their anguished bodies, the warriors,
frozen in the midst of their game, the awed crowd, the three weeping women; M’naith, Preith and
myself. There was a sense of waiting, of expectation.
"Abruptly, a great bolt of lightning cleft the sky like a macrocosmic sword. Its thunder
crashed and the rain began. It was a cold rain, falling slowly at first, then coming down in huge
drops, the rising wind catching them and throwing them in blinding sheets against
the hillside. The crowd began to disperse, hurrying toward the city like frightened tli.
"M'naith and Preith took my arms and led me away, for I could not see. The rain was in my
eyes, but there were tears in them also, and as I cried the last vestiges of my childhood fell away.
"I became the first Martian capable of facing the extinction of the Martian race . . .
"I write this now in the ship during Earth-Mars trajectory, using the language spoken by him
who died upon the cross. It is appropriate that this should be so, and that is why I would not leave
Earth till I had mastered both the written and spoken dialect of the district where the crucifixion
took place. As I write, Preith and M'naith are at my tide, approving of every word I set down,
approving, too, of my decision to return to our planet and spread the gospel that I divined on
Golgotha.
"We shall never conquer Earth. We do not have the right. Our race is an old race, yet it has
never produced a single mature individual. It has built prodigiously of sticks and stones, but its
structures of the mind are stunted affairs, scarcely worth a second glance. It lacks the ideology
which a race needs to justify its continued existence.
"It is true, as Therin states in ‘Land and Man,' that ‘the longevity of a race is commensurable
to the longevity of its native planet.' If it is to have a greater longevity it must be worthy of it. Our
race is not.
"We have lived out our years. We have known this truth for centuries but we have refused to
face it. We have evaded it by developing one hopeless soil stimulant after another, by building
space ships, by planning the conquest of our nearest planetary neighbor. But we can evade it no
longer. Maturity encompasses many things, but most of all it encompasses mercy. In the final
analysis, it is mercy. And if we consider ourselves a mature race, then we must comport ourselves
like mature people.
"This was the insight I divined on Golgotha, and this is the gospel I shall spread, with Preith's
and M'naith's assistance, upon my return. It will not be difficult, for the entire incident is recorded
on M'naith's microfilm and Preith's tapes. One need merely look into the crucified man's eyes to
know that the time has come for Earth to live and the time has come for Mars to die
"With quiet dignity . . ."
 The three Earthmen stood silently in the Martian cathedral. Above them loomed the huge crucifix,
and around them the empty benches curved. Dust motes iridesced like microcosmic suns in the rainbow
light of the dome.
Binns spoke first. "You were right, sir," he said to the captain. "They didn't have a Christ . . . But they
needed one."