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

appeared. He quickly stepped through it, bare except for a pair of scarlet trunks. Many of the
commoners shuddered and shrank back, wincing. To see a priest unrobed was blasphemous.
True, the priest had done it himself. But somehow they might be to blame.
“You have been taught that inviolability proceeds from the priest, a divine aura projected by his
holy flesh and controlled by his will power. Watch!”
He slapped the breast of the empty robe smartly. Instantly it mushroomed outward. He pushed it
away from him. It floated out and down from the bench. Commoners shoved wildly and clawed at
each other, in their desire to avoid being touched by it.
It came to rest about two feet from the ground, jogging up and down gently, for all the world
like a recumbent priest, complete even to the puffed scarlet gloves—except that there was no
gleaming shaven head under the eerily glowing violet halo which all men knew to be an outward
sign of the priest’s holy thoughts.
The panic-stricken ones regathered in a circle around it, at what they hoped was a safe and
reverent distance.
Jarles’ voice was bitter as medicine. “Maybe you can get to the Hierarchy’s heaven the way that
robe’s trying to. I know of no other. Can’t you see it’s a trick? Rip open that robe”—a commoner
gaped horrifiedly at him for a moment, thinking the words a command—“and you’ll find a network
of fine wires. What does the Great God need with wires? They make what’s called a bilateral,
short-range, multipurpose repulsor field. Something that pushes, see? Something very useful for
protecting a priest from injury and powering his flabby fingers so that they’re stronger than those of
a smith’s. And it props up his halo! Stop gawking at it, you fools! It’s just a trick, I tell you!
“How do I know all this?” he fairly bellowed at them. “You ought to ask that question. Well—
the priests told me! Yes, the priests! Do you know what happens to a young man when he passes
the tests and is admitted to the Hierarchy as a novice?” That got them, he could tell. It took a racy
question like that to whet their dull curiosity. “A lot of things happen to him you don’t know
about. I’m just going to tell you one. He’s told, gradually, in small doses—but unmistakably—that
there is no Great God. That there are no supernatural powers. That the priests are scientists ruling
the world for its own good. That it’s his duty to help them and his good fortune to share in the
benefits.
“Don’t you see? The scheme of the Golden Age scientists worked. Their new religion swept the
world. And as soon as they got the world firmly by the throat, they were able to mold it just the
way they wanted. For themselves, they made a regimented, monastic paradise. To find a model for
the commoners’ world, they went back to a time called the Middle Ages and dug up a nice little
thing called serfdom. Oh, they cleaned it up a bit, made it orderly and healthy, and added a few
touches of downright slavery. But otherwise they didn’t change it one jot. It was just the thing to
keep a whole world in a state of frightened, ignorant, back-broken, grateful servitude.
“Surely, they averted barbarism. By establishing it! “There was one very special wrinkle about
the Middle Ages that you got a taste of today. My priestly educators haven’t got around to telling
me about it, but I can see the why and wherefore of it all right. Witchcraft! Don’t cringe, you idiots!
It’s just another of their tricks, we can be sure. Some of the old religions had witchcraft mixed up
with them, catering to the cheapest superstitions and fears. The scientists decided their religion
ought to have a witchcraft, too. So they let scatterbrained old women like Mother Jujy go around
pretending to tell fortunes, cast spells, and brew love potions. Just the thing to strengthen
superstition and give commoners a bit of an outlet. And a marvelous straw man to knock down with
their scientific exorcisms. Besides providing a neat excuse for getting at people they don’t like,
such as that girl you saw accused today.”
He looked around for Sharlson Naurya, but could not find her in the crowd. Or Brother Chulian.
It was getting dim. The small white sea of faces was beginning to smudge a little. He realized, with
a start, that the sun had set. A chill breeze was trickling down from the hillside farmlands, making
him shiver in his nakedness.