"C M Kornbluth - Kazam Collects" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

Kazam Collects



C. M. Kornbluth




Kazam Collects



"HAIL, JEWEL IN THE LOTUS," half whispered the stringy, brown person. His eyes were shut in holy
ecstasy, his mouth pursed as though he were tasting the sweetest fruit that ever grew.



"Hail, jewel in the lotus," mumbled back a hundred voices in a confused backwash of sound. The stringy,
brown person turned and faced his congregation. He folded his hands.
"Children of Hagar," he intoned. His voice was smooth as old ivory and had a mellow sheen about it



"Children of Hagar, you who have found delight and peace in the bosom of the Elemental, the Eternal,
the Un-know-ingness that is without bounds, make Peace with me." You could tell by his very voice that
the words were capitalized.



"Let our Word," intoned the stringy, brown person, "be spread. Let our Will be brought about Let us
destroy, let us mould, let us build. Speak low and make your spirits white as Hagar's beard." With a
reverent gesture he held before them two handfuls of an unattached beard that hung from the altar.



"Children of Hagar, unite your Wills into One." The congregation kneeled as he gestured at them,
gestured as one would at a puppy one was training to play dead.



The meeting hallтАФor rather, templeтАФof the Cult of Hagar was on the third floor of a little building on
East 59th Street, otherwise almost wholly unused. The hall had been fitted out to suit the sometimes
peculiar requirements of the unguess-able Will-Mind-Urge of Hagar Inscrutable; that meant that there
was gilded wood everywhere there could be, and strips of scarlet cloth hanging from the ceiling in circles
of five. There was, you see, a Sanctified Ineffability about the unequal lengths of the cloth strips.



The faces of the congregation were varying studies in rapture. As the stringy, brown person tinkled a bell