"Steve Perry - The Man Who Never Missed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

the gray-robed figure nodded.

"Yes. It happens that way. Would you care to hear the psychology and
physiology of the experience? The science of it?"

Before Khadaji could speak, Pen continued. "Oh. Excuse me, I forget my
manners. You need new clothes, and food. When did you eat last?"

Khadaji considered it. "Three days," he said- "Before the attack. I've been
drinking water from public fountains, but food hasn't seemed very important."

The fabric covering Pen's face shifted slightly. He had to be smiling. "Come,
then, we'll see to clothing and food and then we'll talk."

While it somehow seemed natural that Pen would do these things for him,
Khadaji felt a sense of wonder about it. Before he could ask, Pen answered his
question. "When one is ready for a teacher, a teacher appears; the same is
true of students—when the right one appears, a teacher knows. The Disk spins
and we are spiraled along to our proper places. It was no chance which brought
us together this day, Emile Khadaji, but the twirlings of the Disk—for now, we
are for each other."

Khadaji nodded. He had never paid court to mysticism, he had been raised by
atheist parents and shaped by a pragmatic military, but he was no longer the
person he had been. He followed the bulky figure in gray because he
understood, in some strange fashion, what Pen meant.
They sat in the shade, under a broad-leafed pulse tree in the court of an
outdoor restaurant. Khadaji now wore a set of loose-weave orthoskins in a gray
which nearly matched Pen's shroud, and dotic boots custom-spun for his feet.
He ate slowly from a plate of highly-spiced vegetables and sipped from a mug
of splash. Arteries throbbed under the woody skin of the pulse tree a meter
away. He watched them and listened while he ate.

Pen was talking. Lecturing. "The psychology of the religious experience has
been well-researched and taped. There are many paths up the mountain—sensory
deprivation or sensory overload—emotional response to stimuli or the lack
thereof is common. Drugs, of course, from psychoactives to the more mundane
depressants. Electropophy can bring it about, as can organic brain damage,
lack or excess of oxygen, even sex can trigger it. And what it is, according
to the science of man and mue, is a subjective mental state, somewhere to the
left of hypnosis. A trick the mind plays on itself. A delusion, void of
reality."

Khadaji took another bite of the vegetables, then grinned.

Pen inclined his head slightly to one side. "And none of what I've just said
matters at all, does it?"

Khadaji shrugged. "I know what I felt. I hear what you are saying. I
understand it here—" he tapped his head with one finger, "—but that doesn't