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

It was not like the Cavern, for the Cavern had been out of Time and Space, and this place was not
enough of a place even for that. It was No-place.

What happened there does not bear telling, but I was madejcnown to certain ones who never departed
from there. All came to them as they existed. They had not color or the seeming of color, or any seeming
of shape.

There I learned that eventually I would join with them; that I had been selected as the one of my planet
who was to dwell without being forever in that No-place.

Guru and I left, having said the word.

"Well?" demanded Guru, staring me in the eye.

"I am willing," I said. "But teach me one word now-"

"Ah," he said grinning. "The girl?"

"Yes," I said. "The word that will mean much to her."

Still grinning, he taught me the word.

Mary, who had been fourteen, is now fifteen and what they call incurably mad.

Last night I saw Guru again and for the last time. He bowed as I approached him. "Peter," he said
warmly. "Teach me the word," said I. "It is not too late." "Teach me the word." "You can withdraw-with
what you master you can master also

this world. Gold without reckoning; sardonyx and gems, Peter! Rich crushed velvet-stiff, scraping,
embroidered tapestries!"

"Teach me the word."

"Think, Peter, of the house you could build. It could be of white marble, and every slab centered by a
winking ruby. Its gate could be of beaten gold within and without and it could be built about one slender
tower of carven ivory, rising mile after mile into the turquoise sky. You could see the clouds float
underneath your eyes."

"Teach me the word."

"Your tongue could crush the grapes that taste like melted silver. You could hear always the song of the
bulbul and the lark that sounds like the dawnstar made musical. Spikenard that will bloom a thousand
thousand years could be ever in your nostrils. Your hands could feel the down of purple Himalayan
swans that is softer than a sunset cloud."

"Teach me the word."

"You could have women whose skin would be from the black of ebony to the white of snow. You"
could have women who would be as hard as flints or as soft as a sunset cloud."