Ray Bradbury Stories Volume 1. Ray Bradbury

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СКАЧАТЬ iron bell they had brought along. ‘What does a bell mean to them?’

      ‘I imagine I brought it for our own comfort,’ admitted Father Peregrine. ‘We need a few familiarities. This church seems so little like a church. And we feel somewhat absurd here – even I; for it is something new, this business of converting the creatures of another world. I feel like a ridiculous play actor at times. And then I pray to God to lend me strength.’

      ‘Many of the Fathers are unhappy. Some of them joke about all this, Father Peregrine.’

      ‘I know. We’ll put this bell in a small tower for their comfort, anyway.’

      ‘What about the organ?’

      ‘We’ll play it at the first service, tomorrow.’

      ‘But, the Martians—’

      ‘I know. But again, I suppose, for our own comfort, our own music. Later we may discover theirs.’

      They arose very early on Sunday morning and moved through the coldness like pale phantoms, rime tinkling on their habits: covered with chimes they were, shaking down showers of silver water.

      ‘I wonder if it is Sunday here on Mars?’ mused Father Peregrine, but seeing Father Stone wince, he hastened on, ‘It might be Tuesday or Thursday – who knows? But no matter. My idle fancy. It’s Sunday to us. Come.’

      The Fathers walked into the flat wide area of the ‘church’ and knelt, shivering and blue-lipped.

      Father Peregrine said a little prayer and put his cold fingers to the organ keys. The music went up like a flight of pretty birds. He touched the keys like a man moving his hands among the weeds of a wild garden, startling up great soarings of Beauty into the hills.

      The music calmed the air. It smelled the fresh smell of morning. The music drifted into the mountains and shook down mineral powders in a dusty rain.

      The Fathers waited.

      ‘Well, Father Peregrine.’ Father Stone eyed the empty sky where the sun was rising, furnace-red. ‘I don’t see our friends.’

      ‘Let me try again.’ Father Peregrine was perspiring.

      He built an architecture of Bach, stone by exquisite stone, raising a music cathedral so vast that its furthest chancels were in Nineveh, its furthest dome at St Peter’s left hand. The music stayed and did not crash in ruin when it was over, but partook of a series of white clouds and was carried away among other lands.

      The sky was still empty.

      ‘They’ll come!’ But Father Peregrine felt the panic in his chest, very small, growing. ‘Let us pray. Let us ask them to come. They read minds; they know.’

      The Fathers lowered themselves yet again, in rustlings and whispers. They prayed.

      And to the East, out of the icy mountains of seven o’clock on Sunday morning or perhaps Thursday morning or maybe Monday morning on Mars, came the soft fiery globes.

      They hovered and sank and filled the area around the shivering priests. ‘Thank you: oh, thank you, Lord.’ Father Peregrine shut his eyes tight and played the music, and when it was done he turned and gazed upon his wondrous congregation.

      And a voice touched his mind, and the voice said:

      ‘We have come for a little while.’

      ‘You may stay,’ said Father Peregrine.

      ‘For a little while only,’ said the voice quietly. ‘We have come to tell you certain things. We should have spoken sooner. But we had hoped that you might go on your way if left alone.’

      Father Peregrine started to speak, but the voice hushed him.

      ‘We are the Old Ones,’ the voice said, and it entered him like a blue gaseous flare and burned in the chambers of his head. ‘We are the old Martians, who left our marble cities and went into the hills, forsaking the material life we had lived. So very long ago we became these things that we now are. Once we were men, with bodies and legs and arms such as yours. The legend has it that one of us, a good man, discovered a way to free man’s soul and intellect, to free him of bodily ills and melancholies, of deaths and transfigurations, of ill humors and senilities, and so we took on the look of lightning and blue fire and have lived in the winds and skies and hills forever after that, neither prideful nor arrogant, neither rich nor poor, passionate nor cold. We have lived apart from those we left behind, those other men of this world, and how we came to be has been forgotten, the process lost; but we shall never die, nor do harm. We have put away the sins of the body and live in God’s grace. We covet no other property; we have no property. We do not steal, nor kill, nor lust, nor hate. We live in happiness. We cannot reproduce; we do not eat or drink or make war. All the sensualities and childishnesses and sins of the body were stripped away when our bodies were put aside. We have left sin behind. Father Peregrine, and it is burned like the leaves in the autumn, and it is gone like the soiled snow of an evil winter, and it is gone like the sexual flowers of a red-and-yellow spring, and it is gone like the panting nights of hottest summer, and our season is temperate and our clime is rich in thought.’

      Father Peregrine was standing now, for the voice touched him at such a pitch that it almost shook him from his senses. It was an ecstasy and a fire washing through him.

      ‘We wish to tell you that we appreciate your building this place for us, but we have no need of it, for each of us is a temple unto himself and needs no place wherein to cleanse himself. Forgive us for not coming to you sooner, but we are separate and apart and have talked to no one for ten thousand years, nor have we interfered in any way with the life of this planet. It has come into your mind now that we are the lilies of the field; we toil not, neither do we spin. You are right. And so we suggest that you take the parts of this temple into your own new cities and there cleanse others. For, rest assured, we are happy and at peace.’

      The Fathers were on their knees in the vast blue light, and Father Peregrine was down, too, and they were weeping, and it did not matter that their time had been wasted; it did not matter to them at all.

      The blue spheres murmured and began to rise once more, on a breath of cool air.

      ‘May I’ – cried Father Peregrine, not daring to ask, eyes closed – ‘may I come again, someday, that I may learn from you?’

      The blue fires blazed. The air trembled.

      Yes, Someday he might come again. Someday.

      And then the Fire Balloons blew away and were gone, and he was like a child, on his knees, tears streaming from his eyes, crying to himself, ‘Come back, come back!’ And at any moment Grandfather might lift him and carry him upstairs to his bedroom in a long-gone Illinois town …

      They filed down out of the hills at sunset. Looking back, Father Peregrine saw the blue fires burning. No, he thought, we couldn’t build a church for the likes of you. You’re beauty itself. What church could compete with the fireworks of the pure soul?

      Father Stone moved in silence beside him. And at last he spoke:

      ‘The way I see it is there’s a Truth on every planet. All parts of the Big Truth. On a certain day they’ll all fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw. This has been a shaking experience. СКАЧАТЬ