"C M Kornbluth - The Words Of Guru" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kornbluth C M)

you?" "Yes, brother."

"There's nothing very unusual about that-glands, I'm told. You know what glands are?"

Then I was alarmed. I had heard of them, but I was not certain whether they were the short, thick green
men who wear only metal or the things with many legs with whom I talked in the woods. "How did you
find out?" I asked him.

"But Peter! You look positively frightened, lad! I don't know a thing about them myself, but Father
Frederick does. He has whole books about them, though I sometimes doubt whether he believes them
himself."

"They aren't good books, brother," I said. "They ought to be

burned." *

"That's a savage thought, my son. But to return to your own problem-"

I could not let him go any further knowing what he did about me. I said one of the words Guru taught me
and he looked at first very surprised and then seemed to be in great pain. He dropped across his desk
and I felt his wrist to make sure, for I had not used that word before. But he was dead.

There was a heavy step outside and I made myself invisible. Stout Father Frederick entered, and I
nearly killed him too with the word, but I knew that that would be very curious. I decided to wait, and
went through the door as Father Frederick bent over the dead monk. He thought he was asleep.
 I went down the corridor to the book-lined office of the stout priest and, working quickly, piled all his
books in the center of the room and lit them with my breath. Then I went down to the schoolyard and
made myself visible again when there was nobody looking. It was very easy. I killed a man I passed on
the street the next day.

There was a girl named Mary who lived near us. She was fourteen then, and I desired her as those in the
Cavern out of Time and Space had desired me.

So when I saw Guru and he had bowed, I told him of it, and he looked at me in great surprise. "You are
growing older, Peter," he said.



"I am, Guru. And there will come a time when your words will not be strong enough for me."

He laughed. "Come, Peter," he said. "Follow me if you wish. There is something that is going to be
done-" He licked his thin, purple lips and said: "I have told you what it will be like."

"I shall come," I said. "Teach me the word." So he taught me the word and we said it together.

The place we were in next was not like any of the other places I had been to before with Guru. It was
No-place. Always before there had been the seeming passage of time and matter, but here there was not
even that. Here Guru and the others cast off their forms and were what they were, and No-place was the
only place where they could do this.