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

"I don't understand."
"The members of our society are the most successful people in the world," Ariel said. "Why not?
They're one up on everybody else." Her voice sounded a little bitter. "They are businessmen and lawyers
and politicians, a physician or two, nurses, actors and actresses, entrepreneurs, gamblers, maybe
politicians, and for all I know kings and queens. If their normal abilities don't get them ahead, they can
always use the power. They can jinx the opposition, bless their own enterprises, use spells, perform rites,
change their appearances, heal the sick, win the caseтАФ"
 "But people like that I'd recognize!" I protested. "Their pictures would be in the papers; they'd be
interviewed on television; they'd be on talk showsтАФ"
"I told you they could change their appearance," Ariel said. "If you could see them as they really
are you could recognize half of them, I'm sure. The last place any of them would want to be recognized,
however, is here. Of course we can make some guesses about people in the world who are unusually
lucky, who win success far beyond their abilities. But nobody knows for sure; good fortune may strike
without the intervention of magic; some people have a natural pipeline to the psychic reservoir."
I thought of a world in which the richest, most powerful men and women were sorcerers, and
shuddered. "But I thought magicians and witches wereтАФ"
"Ugly people who lived in poverty and filth and waited for people in need of their services to
come skulking around to their huts or tents?" She laughed. "Why should initiates wait to be paid by other
people for making them rich or loved or powerful? It never did make sense."
"That's right." I said and awoke to the fact that we had been walking down these steps for a long
time. I looked down the way we were going and saw the steps continuing downward without turning until
they vanished in the murky distance. I looked back the way we had come. The steps went up and up,
unending. The walls were smooth and gray and unbroken.
I turned to Ariel in panic. "What's happened? Where in the hell are we?"
"Oh, dear," she said, looking around. "You may be right. About our location. It looks very much
like a trap."
"A trap?"
"A kind of maze," she said. She caught my hand and patted it I would have felt more reassured if
I had not felt so much like a child, "There's really nothing to get alarmed about," she continued. "It's very
simple. We'll just have to sit down until I can get my bearings. People have starved in these, of course,
but there's really no danger in them as long as you keep your head."
That was easier advice to give than to take. I did not react calmly to the notion of starving to
death on these stairs.
She sank down on a step. I collapsed beside her. For the first time in years I wished I was back
teaching Silas Marner to reluctant students.
Ariel took some objects from her purse and put them down on the step beside her: colorless
lipstick, some eye makeup, fingernail clippers, keys, pen, checkbook, penlight, and assorted junk. Finally
she turned the purse upside down and shook some bobby pins out of the bottom. She replaced the rest
of the objects and began to bend the bobby pins. "Talk if you wish," she said, her hands busy. "It won't
disturb me."
"HowтАФ" I began, and then started again. "How long have people been able to do these kinds of
things?"
"Not long. Not unless you count the Chaldeans and the Minoans. They were said to have
magicians, but we can't be certain. Of course there are legends and myths and folk tales; some reality
may lie behind them, no matter how slight. If we believe them, magic has been part of human experience
since man first began to personify natural forces and see spirits in all living things. Death released those
spirits to wander around; they could be used for good purposes or bad, and natural forces could be
controlled."
What if the myths were true? I asked myself, credulous for a moment, and then I rejected all
such possibilities. That was nothing but superstition. What I was concerned about was some new kind of