"C M Kornbluth - The Words Of Guru" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

She looked where I pointed, but couldn't see it. "What grey thing, Peter?" she asked. I had her call me
by my whole name, Peter, instead of anything silly like Petey. "What grey thing?"

"It's as big as your hand, Clara, but soft. I don't think it has any bones at all. It's crawling up, but I don't
see any face on the top-wards side. And there aren't any legs."

I think she was worried, but she tried to baby me by putting her hand on the wall and trying to find out
where it was. I called out whether she was right or left of the thing. Finally she put her hand right through
the slug. And then I realized that she really couldn't see it, and didn't believe it was there. I stopped
talking about it then and only asked her a few days later: "Clara, what do you call a thing which one
person can see and another person can't?"

"An illusion, Peter," she said. "If that's what you mean." I said nothing, but let her put me to bed as usual,
but when she turned out the light and went away I waited a little while and then called out softly. "Illusion!
Illusion!"

At once Guru came for the first time. He bowed, the way he always has since, and said: "I have been
waiting." "I didn't know that was the way to call you," I said.



"Whenever you want me I will be ready. I will teach you, Peter-if you want to learn. Do you know what
I will teach you?"
 "If you will teach me about the grey thing on the wall," I said, "I will listen. And if you will teach me about
real things and unreal things I will listen."

"These things," he said thoughtfully, "very few wish to learn. And there are some things that nobody ever
wished to learn. And there are some things that I will not teach."

Then I said: "The things nobody has ever wished to learn I will learn. And I will even learn the things you
do not wish to teach."

He smiled mockingly. "A master has come," he said, half-laughing. "A master of Guru."

That was how I learned his name. And that night he taught me a word which would do little things, like
spoiling food.

From that day to the time I saw him last night he has not changed at all, though now I am as tall as he is.
His skin is still as dry and shiny as ever it was, and his face is still bony, crowned by a head of very
coarse, black hair.

When I was ten years old I went to bed one night only long enough to make Joe and Clara suppose I
was fast asleep. I left in my place something which appears when you say one of the words of Guru and
went down the drainpipe outside my window. It always was easy to climb down and up, ever since I was
eight years old.

I met Guru in Inwood Hill Park. "You're late," he said.

"Not too late," I answered. "I know it's never too late for one of these things."