"James E. Gunn - The Magicians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gunn James E)

to improve your formula, know your calculus!"
And he turned to the blackboard, scribbled a formula on it, and the blackboard disappeared.
Just like that. Without smoke, curtains, or illusion. I blinked. The applause was perfunctory. Uriel
nodded, his bald head beaming pinkly, and trotted off the stage.
Ariel was clapping enthusiastically beside me.
"They didn't seem to like that very much," I whispered to her.
"Oh, they're too lazy to learn anything that complicated, and some of them just aren't very bright.
It's a wonderful help, really, and Uriel's a dear, getting up every year and trying to help them. And they
just laugh at him behind his back."
Solomon announced that because the morning session had run longтАФevery program I have ever
been a party to has run longтАФthe lecture on possession would be postponed until the afternoon session.
But those who had not sneaked out during Uriel's talk were already getting up to leave. The morning
session was over; it was time for lunch. I walked, dazed, into the corridor with Ariel. I didn't believe it. I
tried to convince myself that I didn't believe it. But I had heard it and seen it. It was true. These weren't
illusionists with their tricks and distracting patter. They were the real thing, In the last quarter-century of
the twentieth century. They practiced magic, and it worked, and they held conventions, just like veterans
and dentists and lawyers and economists and physicists and a thousand other groups and professions.
And nobody suspected. They were less suspected than if they had met atop Brocken on
Walpurgis Night.

Chapter 4
The chief enemy of life is not death, but forgetfulness, stupidity. We lose direction too
easily. This is the great penalty that life paid for descending into matter: a kind of partial
amnesia.
тАФColin Wilson,
The Occult

"Ariel!" I called. "Ariel!" She was getting away from me, and she was my one bridge to reality. "I've got
to talk to you." She hesitated and then turned back. I was getting fond of the way she looked at me.
"My consulting fee is high," she said,
"How much?" I asked.
"A steak," she said. "About that thick." She held out a finger and a thumb about two inches apart.
"For lunch?" I asked. "I thought girls were supposed to be on diets, eating salads with no
dressing, things like that."
"Not this girl," she said. "Magic uses up lots of energy."
I looked at her quickly to see if she was joking, but I couldn't tell. She didn't look like a witch;
she looked like the girl who lived next door. Prettier, maybe. That kind of witchcraft I could handle.
"Okay," I said. "I guess the budget can handle that if you can handle the steak."
Fifty people were waiting for the elevators. "Let's walk down," Ariel suggested.
I held open the door that opened onto the gray stairwell, and we started down anonymous gray
steps.
"What's to keep me from telling the world about the strange things I've seen here today?" I asked
abruptly. "And what would happen to your happy little society if I told?"
"The answer to both questions," she said, "is: nothing. Who'd believe you?"
"Nobody," I said gloomily. I knew what would happen. Magicians? In the Crystal Room?
Witchcraft? Covens? Spells? Sorcery? Sure, Casey. I know just the person who should hear all
about it. Come along. Come along quietly. Don't get violent. "The crazy thing about it," I said, "is it
works. Why do you keep it hidden? It would be worth millions if you could bring it out in the open.
Patents. Services."
"If you had a mint," Ariel asked, "would you rent it out?"