"Charles L. Harness - The Rose" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harness Charles L)

script. "If you'd read it, I might recognize the contents."

The man said: "I thought you might try this, just to get my eyes off you. If you don't mind, I'll quote from
memory:

" 'тАФwhat a queer climax for the Dream! Yet, inevitable. Art versus Science decrees that one of us must
destroy the Sciomniac weapon; but that could wait until we become more numerous. So, what I do is for
him alone, and his future depends on appreciating it. Thus, Science bows to Art, but even Art isn't all.
The Student must know the one greater thing when he sees the Nightingale dead, for only then will he
recognize...' "

He paused.

"Is that all?" asked Anna.

"That's all."

"Nothing about a...rose?"
"No. What is 'rose' a code word for?"

Death? mused Anna. Was the rose a cryptolalic synonym for the grave? She closed her eyes and
shivered. Were those really her thoughts, impressed into the mind and wrist of Ruy Jacques from some
grandstand seat at her own ballet three weeks hence? But after all, why was it so impossible? Coleridge
claimed Kublai Khan had been dictated to him through automatic writing. And that English mystic,
William Blake, freely acknowledged being the frequent amanuensis for an unseen personality. And there
were numerous other cases. So, from some unseen time and place, the mind of Anna van Tuyl had been
attuned to that of Ruy Jacques, and his mind had momentarily forgotten that both of them could no longer
write, and had recorded a strange reverie.

It was then that she noticed theтАФwhispers.

NoтАФnot whispersтАФnot exactly. More like rippling vibrations, mingling, rising, falling. Her heart beats
quickened when she realized that their eerie pattern was soundless. It was as though something in her
mind was suddenly vibrating en rapport with a subetheric world. Messages were beating at her for
which she had no tongue or ear; they were beyond soundтАФbeyond knowledge, and they swarmed
dizzily around her from all directions. From the ring she wore. From the bronze buttons of her jacket.
From the vertical steam piping in the corner. From the metal reflector of the ceiling light.

And the strongest and most meaningful of all showered steadily from the invisible weapon The Cork
grasped in his coat pocket. Just as surely as though she had seen it done, she knew that the weapon had
killed in the past. And not just once. She found herself attempting to unravel those thought residues of
deathтАФ-onceтАФtwiceтАФthree times...beyond which they faded away into steady, undecipherable
time-muted violence.

And now that gun began to scream: "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

She passed her palm over her forehead. Her whole face was cold and wet. She swallowed noisily.

Chapter Twelve
Ruy Jacques sat before the metal illuminator near his easel, apparently absorbed in the profound