"Fritz Leiber - Gather, Darkness!" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leiber Fritz)

restless and dissatisfied, wanting still more, and sinned in all manner of ways, and lived in vice and
lechery. How the Great God in mercy restrained his anger, hoping that they would reform. How, in
their evil pride, they finally sought to storm heaven itself and all its stars. Then, as the priests never
weary of telling you, the Great God rose up in his wisdom and wrath, and winnowed out the few
men who had not sinned against him and were still obedient to his holy laws. Them he made into
his Hierarchy and gave them supernatural powers even greater than before. The rest—the sinful
ones—he cast down and ground into the dust, and gave his Hierarchy power over them, so that
those who had not of their own free wills lived virtuously would be made to do so by force! Then
he further decreed that his Hierarchy select from each generation of men the naturally virtuous to
be priests, and reject the rest, to toil in blissful ignorance under the gentle but inflexible guidance of
the priests, who are the Hierarchy.”
He paused, looked searchingly into the staring faces.
“That much, all of you know by heart. But not one of you dreams of the truth behind the story!”
Without anger whipping him on, Jarles might have stopped then and there and walked into the
Sanctuary and down into the crypts, so stupid and uncomprehending were the commoners’
reactions, so obviously did they misinterpret every word. At first they had seemed only shocked
and bewildered, though attentive as always. Then—when he had called upon them to think and
judge—they had looked vaguely apprehensive, as if all this rigmarole were merely the introduction
to some assignment of physical labor, literally harder than work in the mines. The story of the
Golden Age had lulled them. It was something familiar. His last sentence had shattered the lull and
brought them again into that state of stupid, anxious gawking.
But what else could he expect? If he could only manage to plant the seeds of questioning in just
one commoner!
“There was a Golden Age. That much is true. Though as far as I know there was plenty of toil
and sorrow in it. But at least all men had a little freedom and were getting more. The getting of it
meant trouble—lots of it—and at one point the scientists became frightened and ... but you don’t
even know what a scientist is, do you? Any more than you know what a doctor is, or a lawyer, or a
judge, or a teacher, or a scholar, or a statesman, or an executive, or, so help me, an artist. Because
the priests are all of those things. They’ve rolled all the professions, all the privileged classes into
one. You don’t rightly know even what a priest is! There were religions in those days, you see, and
worship of a god—in the Golden Age and the long ages before it, ever since man fought his way
up, with hands and brain, to mastery of this planet. But the priests of those religions dealt only in
spiritual and moral matters—at least at such times as they were wise and good. Other work they left
for other professions. And they didn’t use force.
“But that’s getting ahead of my story. I want to tell you about the scientists, and how the Golden
Age ended. A scientist is a thinker. He’s a thinker about how things happen. He watches things
happen. Then if he knows a thing can happen, and if it’s a thing men want, maybe he can figure
out—by thinking and hard work—how to help it happen. No magic, see? No supernatural powers.
Just watching, and thinking, and working.”
He had forgotten to wonder why he had not been silenced. He thought only of how to choose the
right words, how to hammer or ease them home—anything to get a flicker out of those faces!
“The scientists of the Golden Age became afraid that mankind was slipping back into barbarism
and ignorance. Their position as members of a privileged profession was threatened. They decided
that, for a time, they must take control of the world. They were not strong enough to do it directly.
They weren’t fighters. So they got the idea of establishing a new religion, modeled on the old
religions, but powered by science. In the old religions, blessings and cursings worked through
men’s minds. In the religion the scientists established, blessings and cursings worked directly, by
force!
“You want proof? You should want proof. Here it is!”
His hand whipped downward from collar to hem of his heavy, scarlet robe. A metal-edged slit