"Frank Herbert - Soul Catcher" - читать интересную книгу автора (Herbert Brian & Frank)

possessed. The photographs were a spirit omen. The charges of Cedar Cabin had clustered
around him, their faces toward the camera.
Newspapers and magazines would reproduce those pictures. An arrow would point to one
face among the boys -- David Marshall, son of the new Undersecretary of State.
The announcement will come on the six-o'clock news over the rec room's one television.
There,will be pictures of the Marshall boy and his mother at the San Francisco airport, the
father at a press conference in Washington, B.C.
Many hoquat would stare at the pictures Clark had taken. Let them stare at a person they
thought was Charles Hobuhet. The Soul Catcher had yet to reveal Katsuk hidden in that
flesh.
By the moon shadow on the wall, he knew it was almost midnight. Time. With a single
motion, he arose from the bunk, glanced to the note he had left on the room's tiny desk.
'I take an innocent of your people to sacrifice for all the innocents you have murdered, an
innocent to go with all of those other innocents into the spirit place.'
Ahhh, the words they would pour upon this message! All the ravings and analysis, the
hoquat logic ...
The light of the full moon coming through the window penetrated his body. He could feel
the weighted silence of it all along his spine. It made his hand tingle where Bee had left the
message of its stinger. The odor of resin from the rough boards of the walls made him calm.
Without guilt.
The breath of his passion came from his lips like smoke: 'I am Katsuk, the center of the
universe.'
He turned and, in a noiseless glide, took the center of the universe out the door, down
the short hall into the bunk room.
The Marshall boy slept in the nearest cot. Moonlight lay across the lower half of the cot in
a pattern of hills and valleys, undulant with the soft movement of the boy's breathing. His
clothing lay on a locker at the foot of the cot: whipcord trousers, a T-shirt, light sweater and
jacket, socks, tennis shoes. The boy was sleeping in his shorts.
Katsuk rolled the clothing into a bundle around the shoes. The alien fabric sent a message
into his nerves, telling of that mechanical giant the hoquat called civilization. The message
dried his tongue. Momentarily, he sensed the many resources the hoquat possessed to hunt
down those who wounded them.
Alien guns and aircraft and electronic devices. And he must fight back without such
things. Everything hoquat must become alien and denied to him.
An owl cried outside the cabin.
Katsuk pressed the clothing bundle tightly to his chest. The owl had spoken to him. In
this land, Katsuk would have other powers, older and stronger and more enduring than
those of the hoquat.
He listened to the room: eight boys asleep. The sweat of their excitement dominated this
place. They had been slow settling into sleep. But now they slept even deeper because of
that slowness.
Katsuk moved to the head of the boy's cot, put a hand lightly over the sleeping mouth,
ready to press down and prevent an outcry. The lips twisted under his hand. He saw the
eyes open, stare. He felt the altered pulse, the change in breathing.
Softly, Katsuk bent close, whispered: 'Don't waken the others. Get up and come with me.
I have something special for you. Quiet now.'
Hesitant thoughts fleeing through the boy's mind could be felt under Katsuk's hand. Once
more, Katsuk whispered, letting his words flow through his spirit powers: 'I must make you
my spirit brother because of the photographs.' Then: 'I have your clothes. I'll wait in the
hall.'