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

Then gales of satanic laughter that seemed to rock the Sanctuary itself.
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*CHAPTER 2*
"Brother Jarles has begun to harangue the crowd in the Great Square, your resplendent archpriestship."
"Good! Send the reports in to me at the Apex Council as soon as he is finished."
Brother Goniface, priest of the Seventh Circle, arch-priest, chief voice of the Realists in the Apex Council, smiled -- but the smile was not apparent in the pale, lion-like mask of his face. He had touched off a bomb that would blast the Apex Council out of its complacency -- both the Moderates, with their flabby compromises, and his own Realists, with their mulish conservatism.
His dangerous little experiment was running now and couldn't very well be stopped, let Brother Frejeris and the rest of the Moderates yelp as much as they wanted to -- afterwards.
For afterwards everything would be neatly rounded off. Brother Jarles would be dead, frizzled by the Great God's wrath -- an instructive example for the commoners and any other dissatisfied young priests. And Goniface would be able to explain at leisure to the Apex Council just how much vital information had been gained by study of the artificial crisis he had fomented.
Only at times like this did a man really live! To have power was good. To use it dangerously was better.
But to use it in fighting an enemy perhaps as strong as yourself was best of all.
He adjusted his gold-worked scarlet robe, commanded the great doors to open, and strode into the Council Chamber.
At the far end of the vast, pearly room, on an extensive dais, was a long table, with every seat behind it occupied by a gorgeously robed archpriest -- every seat save one.
Goniface relished that long walk the length of the Council Chamber, with all the rest of them already in place. He liked to know that they were watching him every step of the way, hoping he would stumble slightly or scuff the floor, just once. Liked to think how they would spring on him like famished cats if they had the slightest inkling of the secret of his past, that darkest of dark jests.
Liked to know it, and then forget it!
For that long walk across the Council Chamber under those critical eyes gave Goniface something that no other archpriest seemed quite to understand. Something that he would not have allowed excitement over a dozen Jarleses to rob him of. An opportunity to drink in, at its richest and most tense, the power and glory of the Hierarchy -- stablest government the world had ever known. The only government fully worth a strong man's effort to maintain and to dominate it. Built on a thousand lies -- like all governments, thought Goniface -- yet perfectly adapted to solve the intricate problems of human society. And so constituted, by virtue of its rigid social stratification, that the more a member of the priestly elite struggled for power in it, the more closely did he identify himself with the aims and welfare of that elite.
At times like these Brother Goniface became a visionary. He could look through the soaring, softly pearl-gray walls of the Council Chamber, and watch the busy, efficient working of the Sanctuary -- sense its uninterrupted hum of intellectual and executive activity, its subtle pleasures. Then outward, past the limits of the Sanctuary, across the checkerboard of neatly tilled fields, around the curve of the earth, to the gleaming walls of other sanctuaries -- the rural ones simple and modest hermitages, the urban ones each with its cathedral and Almighty Automaton brooding over a great square. And still farther than that, across blue oceans, to other continents and gorgeous tropical islands. And everywhere to see in vision and sense with a pleasure-beyond-pleasure the workings of the scarlet robe -- from the lamaseries clinging unshakably to the titan Himalaya, to the snug stations buried deep in Antarctica. Everywhere the sanctuaries, webbing the whole world, like the ganglia of some globular marine organism, floating in the sea of space.
And then even beyond that -- to heaven itself!
After he had walked a little more than halfway, his imagination began its return journey. And now it followed the lines of the social pyramid, or cone. First the broad base of commoners -- that necessary, bestial, almost mindless substratum. Then a thin layer of deacons -- insulation. Then the novices and rank and file of the first two circles of the priesthood, accounting for more than seven-eighths of the scarlet robes. Then, the cone swiftly narrowing, the various higher circles, each with its special domain of interest and endeavor, until the small Seventh Circle of major executives was reached.
And, on top of all, the archpriests and the Apex Council.
And, whether or not they knew it, whether or not they unconsciously feared or desired it, himself on top of that!
He slipped into his seat and asked, although he knew the answer, "What business today?"
"That, so please your archpriestships," came the well-modulated voice of a Second Circle clerk, "which you have asked me to refer to as the Matter of the Frightened Priests."
Goniface sensed a reaction of annoyance ripple along the Council Table. This was one of those fantastic matters that refused to adjust themselves to established procedures, and were, therefore, exceedingly vexing to conservative mentalities. For two days running the Apex Council had postponed dealing with it.
"What do you say, Brothers?" he proposed in easy, casual tones. "Shall we have all our country relations in together? Shame them by making them listen to each others' childish-seeming tales?"
"That is hardly in accord with the best psychological practices," observed Brother Frejeris, his voice like the middle notes of an organ for beauty and strength. "We then encourage mass hysteria."
Goniface nodded politely, remarking, "You dignify their condition, Brother, with a high-sounding term," and again looked up and down the table, questioningly.
"Have them in together," urged Goniface's fellow Realist Jomald. "Else we'll be here all night."
Goniface glanced toward the senior member, lean Brother Sercival, whose white hair, shaven perhaps yesterday, still gave a silvery tint to his parchment skull.
"Together!" voted Brother Sercival through thin lips, ever stingy with words, the old Fanatic!
At that there was general agreement.
"A trifle of no importance," murmured Brother Frejeris, waving the matter aside with a sculpturesque white hand. "I merely sought to avoid a situation which may prove confusing to those of you who are not trained psychologists."
A clerk transmitted the necessary orders.
As they waited, Brother Frejeris glanced down into his lap. "I am informed," he said, very casually, "that there is a disturbance in the Great Square."
Goniface did not look at him.
"If it is of any consequence," he remarked smoothly, "our servant Cousin Deth will inform us."
"Your servant, Brother," Frejeris corrected, with equal smoothness.
Goniface made no reply.
A score of priests were ushered in through the side door. Superficially they seemed identical with the priests of the Megatheopolis Sanctuary, but to the members of the Apex Council, their every mannerism and gesture, the way they wore their robes and the precise cut of those robes, spelled "country."
They stood before the council table, an abashed and very much impressed clump of men.
Their numbers merely emphasized the lustrous gray vastness of the Council Chamber.
"Your reverend archpriestships," began a gnarly fellow, who seemed to have absorbed something of the earthiness of the endless tilled fields, without working in them. "I know what I'm going to say must seem very unreal here at Megatheopolis," he continued haltingly, his eyes tracing upward the vaulting of the walls until it was lost in the misty ceiling, " -- here at Megatheopolis, where you can turn night into day if you want to. It's different where we come from, where night edges up and clamps down, and you feel the silence creep in from the fields and grab the town -- "
"No atmosphere, man! The story!" interjected Frejeris.
"Story!" snapped Sercival.
"Well, it's ... it's wolves," the gnarly fellow said, with almost a touch of defiance. "I know there aren't any such things, except in the old books. But at night, we see them. Gray, smoky ones, colored like these walls, big as horses, with red eyes. They come loping, packs of them, like banks of mist, over the fields, and come skulking into town, circling around the sanctuary. And whenever a pair of us must go out at night, they follow. The Finger of Wrath can't hurt them -- or the Rod! They just back away from the light it makes and skulk in the shadows. I tell you, your reverences, our commoners are crazy with fear, and the novices are almost as bad. And then, at night, in the cells, something squats on our chests!"
"I know!" interrupted another country priest excitedly. "Cold furry things that twitch at the clothes and softly feel your face. And they squat there, light as down, while you don't know whether you're waking or dreaming, and they nuzzle you and chatter at you in their thin high voices, saying things you hardly dare repeat. But when the light's on, or when you try to clutch at them, they're never there. Yet you can feel them as they touch you and squat on you. Cold, skinny things, covered with a fine fur or hair -- human hair!"
A third country priest, a sallow, high-foreheaded fellow with the look of a schoolmaster, had grown yet more pale at this last recital. "That's exactly how it felt!" he cried out nervously, his eyes fixed on something far away. "Brother Galjwin and I had gone to search the house of a commoner whom we suspected of having concealed a portion of his weavings, on which tithes were due the Hierarchy. They were a bad lot, the daughter the worst -- a shameless hussy! But I was on to their tricks, and pretty soon I spotted a loose board in the wall. I pulled it out, and stuck my arm through and felt around behind. That red-haired hussy was grinning at me in the nastiest, most disrespectful way. I felt a roll of cloth with a heavy nap, and reached in farther, so I could get my fingers around it and pull it out. And then it came alive! It moved. It wriggled! Cold, furry, but human feeling, just like he said -- though the space back there wasn't four inches wide! We had that inside wall torn down, and we watched the crack all the while. Nothing came out. But we found nothing. We gave the household an extra stint of weaving, as penance. We found witchmarks on the daughter, got a special dispensation, and had her sent to the mines with the men.
"One thing I'll never forget. When I jerked my hand out, there were two tiny hairs caught in the jag of a nail -- two tiny hairs of the same angry copper shade as the girl's!
"And now, when I sleep badly, I keep feeling the thing. Thin spidery arms against my palm -- wriggling!"
And now all tongues were unloosed, and there was a frightened babble. One voice, louder than the rest, exclaimed, "They say it's those things that make the witch-marks!"
A gorgeously robed archpriest laughed melodiously, contemptuously. But there was something a little hollow about the laughter.