"Harry Harrison - Captive Universe" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harrison Harry)

If only he could reach the river, it was so close ahead. His woven sandals dug into the dry soil, pushing
him forward toward the water and safety.

A sibilant, distant hissing cut through the silence of the night and Chimal's legs gave way, sending him to
the ground in a spasm of terror. It was Coatlicue, she of the serpent heads, he was dead! He was dead!

Lying there, his fingers clawing uncontrollably at the knee-high corn stalks, he struggled to put his
thoughts in order, to speak his death chant because the time of dying had come. He had broken the rule,
so he would die: a man cannot escape the gods. The hissing was louder now and it sliced through his
head like a knife, he could not think, yet he must. With an effort he mumbled the first words of the chant
as the moon rose above the ledge of rock, almost full, flooding the valley with glowing light and throwing
a black shadow from every cornstalk about him. Chimal turned his head to look back over his shoulder
and there, clear as the road to the temple, was the deep-dug line of his footprints between the rows of
corn. Quiauh—they will find you!

He was guilty and for him there could be no escape. The taboo had been broken and Coatlicue the
dreadful was coming for him. The guilt was his alone; he had forced his love on Quiauh, he had. Hadn't
she struggled? It was written that the gods could be interceded with, and if they saw no evidence they
would take him as a sacrifice and Quiauh might live. His knees were weak with terror yet he pulled
himself to his feet and turned, running, starting back toward the village of Quilapa that he had so recently
left, angling away from the revealing row of footprints.

Terror drove him on, though he knew escape was hopeless, and each time the hissing sliced the air it was
closer until, suddenly, a larger shadow enveloped his shadow that fled before him and he fell. Fear
paralyzed him and he had to fight against his own muscles to turn his head and see that which had
pursued him.

"Coatlicue!" he screamed, driving all the air from his lungs with that single word.

High she stood, twice as tall as any man, and both her serpents' heads bent down toward him, eyes
glowing redly with the lights of hell, forked tongues flicking in and out. As she circled about him the
moonlight struck full onto her necklace of human hands and hearts, illuminated the skirt of writhing snakes
that hung from her waist. As Coatlicue's twin mouths hissed the living kirtle moved, and the massed
serpents hissed in echo. Chimal lay motionless, beyond terror now, accepting death from which there is
no escape, spread-eagled like a sacrifice on the altar.

The goddess bent over him and he could see that she was just as she appeared in the stone carvings in
the temple, fearful and inhuman, with claws instead of hands. They were not tiny pincers, like those of a
scorpion or a river crayfish, but were great flat claws as long as his forearm that opened hungrily as they
came at him. They closed, grating on the bones in his wrists, severing his right arm, then his left Two more
hands for that necklace.

"I have broken the law and left my village in the night and crossed the river. I die." His voice was only a
whisper that grew stronger as he began the death chant in the shadow of the poised and waiting
goddess.
I leave
Descend in one night to the underworld regions
Here we but meet
Briefly, transient on this earth…
When he had finished Coatlicue bent lower, reaching down past her writhing serpent kirtle, and tore out