Orson Scott Card - St Amy's Tale.pdf - Orson Scott Card - margozap

ST. AMY'S TALE

By Orson Scott Card

Mother could kill with her hands. Father could fly. These are miracles. But

they were not miracles then. Mother Elouise taught me that there were no

miracles then.

I am the child of Wreckers, born while the angel was in them. This is

why I am called Saint Amy, though I perceive nothing in me that should make me

holier than any other old woman. Yet Mother Elouise denied the angel in her,

too, and it was no less there.

Sift your fingers through the soil, all you who read my words. Take your

spades of iron and your picks of stone. Dig deep. You will find no ancient

works of man hidden there. For the Wreckers passed through the world, and all

the vanity was consumed in fire; all the pride broke in pieces when it was

smitten by God's shining hand.

Elouise leaned on the rim of the computer keyboard. All around her the

machinery was alive, the screens displaying information. Elouise felt nothing

but weariness. She was leaning because, for a moment, she had felt a

frightening vertigo. As if the world underneath the airplane had dissolved and

slipped away into a rapidly receding star and she would never be able to land.

True enough, she thought. I'll never be able to land, not in the world I knew.

"Getting sentimental about the old computers?"

Elouise, startled, turned in her chair and faced her husband, Charlie. At that

moment the airplane lurched, but like sailors accustomed to the shifting of

the sea, they adjusted unconsciously and did not notice the imbalance.

"Is it noon already?" she asked.

"It's the mortal equivalent of noon. I'm too tired to fly this thing anymore,

and it's a good thing Bill's at the controls."

"Hungry?"

Charlie shook his head. "But Amy probably is," he said.

"Voyeur," said Elouise.

Charlie liked to watch Elouise nurse their daughter. But despite her

accusation, Elouise knew there was nothing sexual in it. Charlie liked the

idea of Elouise being Amy's mother. He liked the way Amy's sucking resembled

the sucking of a calf or a lamb or a puppy. He had said, "It's the best thing

we kept from the

animals. The best thing we didn't throw away."

"Better than sex?" Elouise had asked. And Charlie had only smiled.

Amy was playing with a rag doll in the only large clear space in the airplane,

near the exit door. "Mommy Mommy Mamommy Mommyo," Amy said. The child stood

and reached to be picked up. Then she saw Charlie. "Daddy Addy Addy."

"Hi," Charlie said.

"Hi," Amy answered. "Ha-ee." She had only just learned to close the diphthong,

and she exaggerated it. Amy played with the buttons on Elouise's shirt, trying

to undo them.

"Greedy," Elouise said, laughing.

Charlie unbuttoned the shirt for her, and Amy seized on the nipple after only

one false grab. She sucked noisily, tapping her hand gently against Elouise's

breast as she ate.

"I'm glad we're so near finished," Elouise said. "She's too old to be nursing

now."

"That's right. Throw the little bird out of the nest."

"Go to bed," Elouise said.

Amy recognized the phrase. She pulled away. "La-lo," she said.

"That's right. Daddy's going to sleep," Elouise said.

Elouise watched as Charlie stripped off most of his clothing and lay down on

the pad. He smiled once, then turned over, and was immediately asleep. He was

in tune with his body. Elouise knew that he would awaken in exactly six hours,

when it was time for him to take the

controls again.

Amy's sucking was a subtle pleasure now, though it had been agonizing the

first few months, and painful again when Amy's first teeth had come in and she

had learned to her delight that by nipping she could make her mother scream.

But better to nurse her than ever have her eat the predigested pap that was

served as food on the airplane. Elouise thought wryly that it was even worse

than the microwaved veal cordon bleu that they used to inflict on commercial

passengers. Only eight years ago. And they had calibrated their fuel so

exactly that when they took the last draft of fuel from the last of their

storage tanks, the tank registered empty; they would burn the last of the

processed petroleum, instead of putting it back into the earth. All their

caches were gone now, and they would be at the tender mercies of the world

that they themselves had created.

Still, there was work to do; the final work, in the final checks. Elouise held

Amy with one arm while she used her free hand slowly to key in the last

program that her role as commander required her to use. Elouise Private, she

typed. Teacher teacher I declare I see someone's underwear, she typed. On the

screen appeared the warning she had put there: "You may think you're lucky

finding this program, but unless you know the magic words, an alarm is going

to go off all over this airplane and you'll be had. No way out of it, sucker.

Love, Elouise."

Elouise, of course, knew the magic words. Einstein sucks, she typed. The

screen went

blank, and the alarm did not go off.

Malfunction? she queried. "None," answered the computer.

Tamper? she queried, and the computer answered, "None."

Nonreport? she queried, and the computer flashed, "AFscanP7bb55."

Elouise had not really been dozing. But still she was startled, and she

lurched forward, disturbing Amy, who really had fallen asleep. "No no no,"

said Amy, and Elouise forced herself to be patient; she soothed her -daughter

back to sleep before pursuing whatever it was that her guardian program had

caught. Whatever it was? Oh, she knew what it was. It was treachery. The one

thing she had been sure her group, her airplane would never have. Other groups

of Rectifiers-wreckers, they called themselves, having adopted their enemies'

name for them - other groups had had their spies or their faint hearts, but

not Bill or Heather or Ugly-Bugly.

Specify, she typed.

The computer was specific.

Over northern Virginia, as the airplane followed its careful route to find and

destroy everything made of metal, glass, and plastic; somewhere over northern

Virginia, the airplanes path bent slightly to the south, and on the return, at

the same place, the airplane's path bent slightly to the north, so that a

strip of northern Virginia two kilometers long and a few dozen meters wide

could contain some nonbiodegradable artifact, hidden from the airplane, and if

Elouise had not queried this program,

she would never have known it.

But she should have known it. When the plane's course bent, alarms should have

sounded. Someone had penetrated the first line of defense. But Bill could not

have done that, nor could Heather, really-they didn't have the sophistication

to break up a bubble program. Ugly-Bugly?

She knew it wasn't faithful old Ugly-Bugly. No, not her.

The computer voluntarily flashed, "Override M577b, commandmo4, intwis CtTttT."

It was an apology. Someone aboard ship had found the alarm override program

and the overrides for the alarm overrides. Not my fault, the computer was

saying.

Elouise hesitated for a moment. She looked down at her daughter and moved a

curl of red hair away from Amy's eye. Elouise's hand trembled. But she was a

woman of ice, yes, all frozen where compassion made other women warm. She

prided herself on that, on having frozen the last warm places in her-frozen so

goddamn rigid that it was only a moment's hesitation. And then she reached out

and asked for the access code used to perform the treachery, asked for the

name of the traitor.

The computer was even less compassionate than Elouise. It hesitated not at

all.

The computer did not underline; the letters on the screen were no larger than

normal. Yet Elouise felt the words as a shout, and she answered them silently

with a scream.

Charles Evan Hardy, b24ag61-richlandWA.

It was Charlie who was the traitor-Charlie, her sweet, soft, hard-bodied

husband, Charlie who secretly was trying to undo the end of the world.

God has destroyed the world before. Once in a flood, when Noah rode it out in

the Ark. And once the tower of the world's pride was destroyed in the

confusion of tongues. The other times, if there were any other times, those

times are all forgotten.

The world will probably be destroyed again, unless we repent. And don't think

you can hide from the angels. They start out as ordinary people, and you never

know which ones. Suddenly God puts the power of destruction in their hands,

and they destroy. And just as suddenly, when all the destruction is done, the

angel leaves them, and they're ordinary people. Just my mother and my father.

I can't remember Father Charlie's face. I was too young.

Mother Elouise told me often about Father Charlie. He was born far to the west

in a land where water only comes to the crops in ditches, almost never from

the sky. It was a land unblessed by God. Men lived there, they believed, only

by the strength of their own hands. Men made their ditches and forgot about

God and became scientists. Father Charlie became a scientist. He worked on

tiny animals, breaking their heart of hearts and combining it in new ways.

Hearts were broken too often where he worked, and one of the little animals

escaped

and killed people until they lay in great heaps like fish in the ship's hold.

But this was not the destruction of the world.

Oh, they were giants in those days, and they forgot the Lord, but when their

people lay in piles of moldering flesh and brittling bone, they remembered

they were weak.

Mother Elouise said, "Charlie came weeping." This is how Father Charlie became

an angel. He saw what the giants had done, by thinking they were greater than

God. At first he sinned in his grief. Once he cut his own throat. They put

Mother Elouise's blood in him to save his life. This is how they met: In the

forest where he had gone to die privately, Father Charlie woke up from a sleep

he thought would be forever to see a woman lying next to him in the tent and a

doctor bending over them both. When he saw that this woman gave her blood to

him whole and unstintingly, he forgot his wish to die. He loved her forever.

Mother Elouise said he loved her right up to the day she killed him.

When they were finished, they had a sort of ceremony, a sort of party. "A

benediction," said Bill, solemnly sipping at the gin. "Amen and amen."

"My shift," Charlie said, stepping into the cockpit. Then he noticed that

everyone was there and that they were drinking the last of the gin, the bottle

that had been saved for the end. "Well, happy us," Charlie said, smiling.

Bill got up from the controls of the 787. "Any preferences on where we set

down?" he asked. Charlie took his place.

The others looked at one another. UglyBugly shrugged. "God, who ever thought

about it?"

"Come on, we're all futurists," Heather said. "You must know where you want to

live."

"Two thousand years from now," UglyBugly said. "I want to live in the world

the way it'll be two thousand years from now."

"Ugly-Bugly opts for resurrection," Bill said. "I, however, long for the bosom

of Abraham."

"Virginia," said Elouise. They turned to face her. Heather laughed.

"Resurrection," Bill intoned, "the bosom of Abraham, and Virginia. You have no

poetry, Elouise."

"I've written down the coordinates of the place where we are supposed-to

land," Elouise said. She handed them to Charlie. He did not avoid her gaze.

She watched him read the paper. He showed no sign of recognition. For a moment

she hoped that it had all been a mistake, but no. She would not let herself be

misled by her desires.

"Why Virginia?" Heather asked.

Charlie looked up. "It's central."

"It's east coast," Heather said.

"It's central in the high survival area. There isn't much of a living to be

had in the western mountains or on the plains. It's not so far south as to be

in hunter gatherer country and not so far north as to be unsurvivable for a

high proportion of the people. Barring a hard winter. "

"All very good reasons," Elouise said. "Fly us there, Charlie."

Did his hands tremble as he touched the controls? Elouise watched very

carefully, but he did not tremble. Indeed, he was the only one who did not.

Ugly-Bugly suddenly began to cry, tears coming from her good eye and streaming

down her good cheek. Thank God she doesn't cry out of the other side, Elouise

thought; then she was angry at herself, for she had thought Ugly-Bugly's

deformed face didn't bother her anymore. Elouise was angry at herself, but it

only made her cold inside, determined that there would be no failure. Her

mission would be complete. No allowances made for personal cost.

Elouise suddenly started out of her contemplative mood to find that the

two other women had left the cockpit-their sleep shift, though it was doubtful

they would sleep. Charlie silently flew the plane, while Bill sat in the

copilot's seat, pouring himself the last drop from the bottle. He was looking

at Elouise.

"Cheers," Elouise said to him.

He smiled sadly back at her. "Amen," he said. Then he leaned back and

sang softly:

Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.

Praise him, ye creatures here below.

Praise him, who slew the wicked host.

Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

Then he reached for Elouise's hand. She was surprised, but let him take

it. He bent to her and kissed her palm tenderly. "For many have entertained

angels unaware," he said to her.

A few moments later he was asleep. Charlie and Elouise sat in silence.

The plane flew on south as darkness overtook them from the east. At first

their silence was almost affectionate. But as Elouise sat and sat, saying

nothing, she felt the silence grow cold and terrible, and for the first time

she realized that when the airplane landed, Charlie would be her-Charlie, who

had been half her life for these last few years, whom she had never lied to

and who had never lied to her-would be her enemy.

I have watched the little children do a dance called Charlie-El. They

sing a little song to it, and if I remember the words, it goes like this:

I am made of bones and glass.

Let me pass, let me pass.

1 am made of brick and steel. Take my heel, take my heel.

1 was killed just yesterday.

Kneel and pray, kneel and pray. Dig a hole where I can sleep.

Dig it deep, dig it deep.

Will I go to heaven or hell?

Charlie-El. Charlie-El.

I think they are already nonsense words to

the children. But the poem first got passed word

Orson Scott Card - St Amy's Tale.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: