"Henry Kuttner - Sword of Tomorrow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kuttner Henry)

Yes, he smoked opium. Kai-Sieng said, but it was not that alone. He had been in Tibet, at a
lamasery. There he had learned something of the secret of detaching the soul from the body.
Court wondered.
In military classes, he himself had studied psychonamics, that strange weapon of psychological
defense that is, in essence, self-hypnotism. Here in a prison cell in China, from the mouth of a
rancid-smelling Mongolian guerrilla, he was learning an allied scienceтАФor mysticism.
He told Kai-Sieng something of his fears, that he would go mad, or that he would be unable to
endure the tortures. His will was weakening under the impact of the cannabis indica, and he was afraid
that eventually he would talk.
"Turn their own weapons against them," the Mongolian said. "The poppy smoke is the opener of the
gate. I will teach you what I can. You must learn to relax utterly in the central peace of the universe."
Mysticism, yes, but it was merely a phrasing of psychonamic basics. There was no candle-flame to
focus Court's attention. He was sick, body and soul, and relaxation was impossible.
If his lips ever came unsealed, he might blurt out everythingтАФincluding a certain bit of military
information that no Japanese knew he possessed. It was vital that the enemy should not get that
information, how vital only Court and a few three-star generals in the Eastern Theatre knew. Suicide was
impossible. He was watched too closely for that. And so, with his eyes open, Court walked into the trap
his captors had set and became an opium addict.
Kai-Sieng showed him the way. The Japanese were only too glad to supply a layout, and Court
found the Peace of the Poppy. But under the Mongolian's guidance he learned something else, the
psychonamic defense that had come out of a Tibetan lamasery. It was hard at first, but the opium
helped.
He visualized the sea, deep, calm, immense, and he let himself sink into the fathomless depths. The
farther clown he went, the less the outside world mattered. Soaked in opium, his mind drowning in a
shoreless ocean, he sank into the blue deeps, and day by day he left the prison farther behind. It was
psychic science of a high order, but the Japanese commander did not understand. He thought that
Court's will was growing more pliant, that soon he could successfully question a mind-dulled, helpless
dupe.



Kai-Sieng was taken way and shot. Dreamily Court knew what was happening. It did not matter.
Nothing mattered, really. For only the azure sea was real, that profound deep that took him into its
protective embrace and kept him safe.
The opium supply stopped. The Japs had grown suspicious. But they were too late. Not even the
craving of Court's body far the drug could wake him from his blue dream. Not even torture, ruthless and
inhuman, could bring life back into his eyes. He had gone down the ancient Tibetan road and found
peace.
But he was not dead. His body, inactive, required less and less fuel. It was not inhabited. His mind
had gone elsewhere. Like the blue-robed lamas who are reputed to live for a thousand years in the
Himalayan peaks, Court was prolonging his life-span byтАФresting. The machine of his corporeal existence
was idling. Dimly, in the heart of the machine, the life-spark flickered.
He did not know it. He did not know his name any more. He remembered nothing. He rocked
endlessly in the limpid blue vastness, while the armies swept across the face of the world, and Fujiyama's
white cone reflected the red of burning cities. He slept, while the shark-faced planes flew above him, and
while the buildings exploded in thundering ruin. He slept, while his cell was sealed in crashing destruction,
and the seal was crimsoned with Japanese blood. He still slept, though above him, on the surface of the
earth smoked a lifeless rubble where a Japanese fortress once stood.
Hermetically locked, there in the dark, Ethan Court lay at rest. In Tibetan monasteries Tibetian
priests slept similar sleeps, and wake, and finally died. The earth swung in its tremendous orbit around the