"The Bright Illusion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

Dixon said nothing. His eyes were upon her, but the bright illusion was swimming curiously in a mist that was closing down over him, and he was becoming aware of a strange pulsing of his own blood, as if—yes, as if familiar waves of knowledge were beginning their beat through his receptive brain. For a timeless interval he stood rigid, receiving that intelligence, feeling all he had seen and heard draining out of him into the vast reservoir of knowledge which was the light-being, feeling the voiceless commands of it flowing in. Ripple after ripple of the incoming tide rose in his brain. And gradually, in measured beats, he learned that this pool was the source of the pale flame burning upon the pillar, but that it was not essentially a part of it. The god IL drew his power from the dissolving lives of those people who sacrificed themselves—and this was the only way to destroy them, for they could not die otherwise—but IL was not present in the
pool. IL was the flame on the column, no more, feeding upon the reflection from below. And if the rising light could be cut off temporarily IL’s power would fail at its source. The invader could make an entrance and fight it out with him.
And now for an instant all the thought flow ceased; then in sharply clear ripples of intense emphasis came the syllables of a word. It was a word without meaning to Dixon, a word whose very sounds were unlike those of any language that man speaks. But he knew that he must speak it, and that the cadences of the sound would somehow open the way for the light-being to enter. With the impression of that word upon him the ripples ceased. A profound quiet reigned in his mind.
Out of that quiet the great domed temple slowly took form about him again. He heard the gong notes trembling through the air and saw another steel-robed figure pacing toward the pool. He turned his head and looked down into the high priestess’ face at his shoulder. He had only to speak the word now and accomplish IL’s overthrow—and then leave. Leave her—never see her again, except perhaps in dreams.
Her eyes met his with a little kindling under the blueness of them, and her mouth trembled into a smile as she met his gaze. She had the look of one eager and taut and waiting, and there was perfect faith in her eyes. And in that instant he knew he could not betray it.
“No,” he murmured aloud. “No, my dear; I can’t—I simply can’t do it!”
Her brows drew together in exquisite bewilderment. “Do what?” she asked in a light whisper, to match his own lowered tone. “Do what?” But somehow the answer seemed not to interest her, for she did not pause for a reply. She had met his eyes and was staring up in a sort of dazed surprise, her blue gaze plunging into his with rigid intensity. And slowly she began to speak, in a tiny, breathless murmur. “I think . . . I think I see, 0 Dixon, the strangest things . . . in your eyes. Dreadful things and shapes without meaning - . . and something like a veil between us. . . - Dixon. . . nothing is clear. . . and yet—and yet, Dixon, my own face is looking back at me out of your eyes.”
He caught his breath suddenly in a painful gasp, and in one involuntary motion he had her in his arms. She clung to him blindly. He could feel the trembling that shivered through her steel-sheathed body, and her heart’s pounding shook them both.
“I am afraid, Dixon—I am afraid!” she wailed softly. “What is it that frightens me so, Dixon?”
He did not answer. There was no answer. But he hugged her close
and felt the sweet firmness of her body against his and knew helplessly that he loved the illusion that was herself and would always love it.
Dixon was frightened, too; frightened at the depth of the emotion that shook him, for he was remembering the clinging of her soft mouth to his, and how beautifully her body curved under the embrace of her metal robe, and that the loveliness which filled his arms and his heart was no more than an illusion to mask something so grotesque that he could never bear to look upon it unmasked. Lovely body, lovely face, sweet, warm mouth upon his—was this all? Could love rise from no more than a scrap of beautifully shaped flesh? Could any man love more than that with such intensity as shook him now?
He loosed her from one arm and set his finger under her chin, lifting her face to his. Her eyes met his own, blue and puzzled and afraid, and shining with something very splendid which all but blotted out her bewilderment and her terror.
“I love you,” he murmured. “I don’t care—I love you.”
“Love?” she echoed in her light whisper. “Love?” And he saw in her eyes that the word had no meaning for her.
The room reeled about him for an instant. Somehow he had never thought of that. Knowing as he did of the immense gulf between them and the strangeness of the emotions which swayed these creatures of such alien race, yet it had not occurred to him that anywhere throughout the cosmos where living beings dwelt there could be a species to which love had no meaning. Was she, then, incapable of feeling it? Good heaven, was he doomed to love an empty body, soulless, the mirage masking a sexless being who could not return any emotion he knew?
He looked down and saw the diffused radiance behind her eyes, shining and very tender, and the bewilderment upon her face, and he thought, somehow, that he was hovering on the very brink of something vaster than anything he had ever known before—an idea too splendid to be grasped. Yet when he looked down into her eyes he thought he understood—almost— Suddenly all about him the world trembled. It was as if the whole
vast place were the reflection in a pool, and a ripple had passed blurringly over the surface. Then everything righted itself. But he understood. He had been here too long. The veil between him and this alien world was wearing thin.
“No—I can’t go!” he groaned and gripped the girl closer in his arms.
He must have spoken aloud, for he felt her stir against him and
heard her anxious voice. “Go? 0 Dixon, Dixon—take me with you! Don’t leave me, Dixon!”
Some fantastic hope flowered suddenly within him. “Why not?” he demanded. “Why not? Tell me!” And he shook her a little in his urgency.
“I don’t know,” she faltered. “I only know that—that—O Dixon, that I shall be so lonely when you have gone. Take me—please take me!”
“Why?” he demanded inexorably. For he thought now that he was hovering very near the understanding of the vast and splendid thing which had almost dawned upon him before the world shook.
“Because I . . . because . . . I don’t understand it, Dixon, I can’t tell you why—I haven’t the words. But since you came I—is it that I have been waiting for you always? For I never knew until you came how lonely I had been. And I cannot let you go without me. 0 Dixon, is this what you call love?”
There was pain in her voice and in her veiled eyes. And the thought came to him that love was like an infectious germ, spreading pain wherever it rooted itself. Had he brought it to her—infected her, too, with the hopeless passion he knew? For it was wildly hopeless. In a moment or so he must leave this alien place forever, and no power existent could maintain very long the illusory veil through which they knew love.
Could his own new love for her endure the sight of her real self? And what would happen to this strange flowering of an emotion nameless and unknown to her—her love for him? Could it bear the look of his human shape, unmasked? And yet, he asked himself desperately, could a love as deep and sincere as the love he bore her be so transient a thing that he could not endure the sight of her in another guise? Could— Again that queer flickering flashed over the world. Dixon felt the
ground underfoot tilt dangerously, and for a moment insane colors stabbed at his eyes and the whole room reeled and staggered. Then it was still again. He had scarcely noticed. He swung her around to face him, gripping her shoulders and staring down compellingly into her eyes.
“Listen!” he said rapidly, for he knew his time was limited now, perhaps to seconds. “Listen! Have you any idea what you are asking?”
“Only to go with you,” she said. “To be with you, wherever you are. And if you are indeed IL’s messenger—perhaps a part of his godhead
—then shall I enter the flame and give myself to IL? In that way can I join you and be one with you?”
He shook his head. “I am not from IL. I have been sent to destroy him. I’m a man from a world so different from yours that you could never bear to look upon me in my real form. You see me as an illusion, just as I see you. And I must go back to my own world now— alone.”
Her eyes were dizzy with trying to understand.
“You are—not from IL? Not as you seem? Another world? Oh, but take me with you! I must go—I must!”
“But, my dearest, I can’t. Don’t you understand? You couldn’t live an instant in my world—nor I much longer in yours.”
“Then I will die,” she said calmly. “I will enter the flame and wait for you in death. I will wait forever.”
“My darling, not even that.” He said it gently. “Not even in death can we be together. For when you die you go back to IL, and I go—I go—back to another god, perhaps. I don’t know. But not to IL.”
She stood, blank-eyed, in his grasp, trying to force her mind into the incredible belief. When she spoke, the words came slowly, as if her thoughts were speaking aloud.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “But I know . . . you speak the truth. If I die by the flame—in the only way there is for me to die—we are parted forever. I can’t! I won’t! I will not let you go! Listen to me—” and her voice dropped to a soft whisper—”you say you came to destroy IL? Why?”
“As the envoy of another god, who would take his place.”
“I have given my whole life to the worship of IL,” she murmured to herself, very gently. And then, in a stronger voice: “But destroy him, Dixon! There may be a chance that way—there is none now. Oh, I may be a traitor—worse than a traitor. There is no word to describe one who betrays his god into destruction, no word terrible enough. But I would do it—yes, gladly, now. Destroy him, and let me seek another death somewhere, somehow—let me die as you die. Perhaps your god can release me into your sort of death, and I can wait for you there until you come. Oh, Dixon, please!”
The idea was a staggering one, but for a wild moment Dixon knew hope again. Might it not be that—that— Quite suddenly he understood. He looked down on the loveliness of her with unseeing eyes. In these past few moments of insanity, learning that she loved him, too, enough that she begged death of him if in that way they might be united, in these few moments he came to realize that the flesh meant nothing. It was not her body he loved. And a great relief flooded him, to be sure that—sure that it was not merely infatuation, or desire for the loveliness which did not exist save as a
mirage before his eyes. No, it was love, truly and completely, despite the shape she wore, despite the nameless sex that was hers. Love for herself—the essential self, however deeply buried beneath whatever terrible guise. And though her very substance was alien to him, and though no creature in all her ancestry had ever known love before, she loved him. Nothing else mattered.
And then without warning the great dome before him wavered and contorted into impossible angles, like the reflections in a flawed mirror. And Dixon felt the firm curved body in his arms melting fluidly into a different form and texture. It squirmed.
He stood at the entrance to a mighty room that staggered with frantic color, reeling with eye-stunning angles and incredible planes. And in his arms— He looked down. He clasped a creature at which he could not bear to look directly, a thing whose wild-looped limbs and sinuous body rippled and crawled with the moving tints of madness. It was slippery and horrible to the touch, and from the midst of a shifting, featureless face a great lucid eye stared up at him with desperate horror, as if it was looking upon something so frightful that the very sight was enough to unseat its reason.
Dixon closed his eyes after that one revolting glimpse, but he had seen in the eye upturned to him enough of dawning comprehension to be sure that it was she whom he held. And he thought that despite the utter strangeness of that one staring eye there was somewhere in the clarity of it, and the steadfastness, a glimmer of the innermost spark which was the being he loved—that spark which had looked from the blue gaze he had seen in its human shape. With that inner spark of life she was the same.
He tightened his grip upon her—or it—though his flesh crept at the contact and he knew that the feel was as revolting to it as to himself, and looked out over that shallow, color-stained head upon the vast room before him. His eyes throbbed savagely from those fierce colors never meant for human eyes to see. And though the creature in his arms hung acquiescent, he knew the effort it must cost to preserve that calm.
A lump rose in his throat as he realized the significance of that— such utter faith in him, though he wore a shape terrible enough to bring the fear of madness into that great lucid eye when it rested upon him. But he knew he could not stand there long and retain his own sanity. Already the colors were raving almost audibly through his brain, and the ground heaved underfoot, and he was sure that neither of them could endure much more of this. So he gripped the dreadful
thing which housed the being he loved, and almost of itself he felt that incredibly alien word rip itself from his lips.
It was not a word to be set down in any written characters. Its sound to his ears was vague and indeterminate, like a whisper heard over too great distances to have any form. But the moment it left his lips he felt a vast, imponderable shifting in the substance of the temple. And, like a shutter’s closing, the room went black. Dixon gave one involuntary sob of relief as the maniacal colors ceased their assault upon his brain, and he felt the dreadful thing in his arms go rigid in the utter blackness. For a moment everything was still as death.