"Lumley,.Brian.-.Titus.Crow.2.-.Transition.Of.Titus.Crow" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)
'It has a mind!' I cut in.
'And do you know its location, relative to your own at the time we interfered?'
'No, only that it was close, buried somewhere under the earth.'
There followed a hurried discussion among the council members. Finally the spokesman turned back to me. 'We can try, but you must help. Your mind can only - live -for so long unbodied. If between us we cannot find this machine of yours, then you will perish. I will explain.'
And he did explain. I was told that after the transference, if I wished to wander mentally and unrestricted by flesh in 125 A.D., then I could do so simply by willing it. I would be almost, well, a ghost. In the meantime my body's present inhabitant would be snatched back into his own body far in the past. This would leave my human shell empty, a husk of flesh without a will, without a mind or spirit. Gradually, then, my free-wandering mind would lose its ability to move of its own accord, and soon my body would die. If I could not find the clock, and if I did not get back to my body in time . . .
The body is the battery, you see, Henri? And the mind is the power. Without the power the battery is flat, dead. Without the battery the power must escape, dissipate. The dangers were . . .
. . . they would attempt in the interval of transference to find the mechanical mind that powered the time-clock, and then to enter my mind into it. That, too, was something they had never done before: inserting a mind alongside another in the same body. Looking back now I can see that the risks were enormous, but at ...
. . . arrangements had been made and I was to ... energy . . . projection . . .
6 Back to the Clock
. . . that obviously they had not been able to locate the clock. I was back in my own body, back where I started in the villa of Felicius Tetricus. I was in the old man's chambers and he was seated at a table writing. He looked up thoughtfully, and he looked right through me!
No sign of recognition, no glimmer to even hint of my presence showed on his face. Was he ill? 'Felicius,' I began, stepping forward, but I heard nothing, and instead of moving on my own two feet I seemed merely to drift! And in that instant I became aware that indeed I had no body! My mind was free, not clothed in flesh, and somewhere within this household my empty husk must even now be dying for want of a governing spirit!
. . . such mental panic . . .
. . . old physician entered with a powder for Felicius. The ex-senator looked up at him and said, 'Septimeus, have you seen Titus?'
'He went out to walk on the moors, I believe, Felicius. He has been strangely unsettled these past few days, as you know, but today he seemed much more his old self. He seemed, when I saw him, full of life and curiosity. He'll come to no harm.'
'Huh!' the master of the house grunted. 'Doubtless he's off to visit with that simpleton Urbicus. Can't understand what he sees in that fellow!'
Lollius Urbicus! Could it be that my body lay at his house? But that was some miles away. I must hurry! Unaccustomed to this unbodied condition of mine I moved toward the open door, and as I did so Septimeus stepped in my way. I passed through him before I could
bring myself to stop! But I should have known it: a bodiless mind can know no barriers. Behind me as I passed out through the wall in the direction of Urbicus' place I heard Felicius say: 'You went quite white then, Septimeus. Is something
wrong?'
And I heard the old physician's answer: 'I ... it was as if someone stepped on my soul!'
Then I was on my way to the house of Lollius Urbicus, drifting in what seemed to me to be agonizing slowness over the moors toward the valley where his modest dwelling nestled. Worse than this frustrating inability to force myself to move faster, the thought came to me that indeed I was slowing down fractionally! What had that spokesman for the council of the Archives said to me? That if I did not return to my own body at once I would gradually lose my ability to move about? In a passion of frustration and dread, I finally came to the house of Lollius Urbicus, only to discover that he was not in, that I - or rather my body - was not there either!
Rapidly weakening now, or perhaps it was only my morbid imagination, I started back for . . .
'It may well be,' replied Septimeus. 'And it would certainly explain his never-ending visits to Urbicus' place. The two of them would have to be in it together. The shrine was buried deep - I saw to that myself - but two of them working at it secretly could soon exhume it, I think. That is always assuming, of course, that they have discovered the shrine's burial place.'
Felicius' face darkened as he climbed to his feet. 'It would be most ungrateful of Titus,' he said. 'Come, gather
a few of the servants together: Thorpos and Valerius and a handful of others. We'll go, you and I, to where the shrine is buried. If they are there I shall be most angry!'
Was it possible? The clock and my body both ... I followed the two Romans as close to heel as a dog as they quickly prepared for a visit to the buried shrine. But by then I knew indeed that my strength was failing. The power of my mind was dimming, waning, I had difficulty in concentrating. But I must . . .
. . . over the moors. We were only a handful - rather, they were only a handful, for of course I was less physically than a puff of wind - Felicius, Septimeus, Thorpos and four others. Mercifully I found that simply following them was comparatively easy. It required very little conscious effort on my part to allow their embodied spirits to draw mine after them; but I had to fight off a constant weariness now, the urge to simply fall asleep. I knew that this was a sleep from which I could never awaken!
. . . perhaps two miles. I knew the little valley, for it was a place I had often visited during walks . . . wonder that I had never guessed that here my clock lay hidden, for its tomb was deep in the heart of a hazel grove beside a small stream . . .
. . . dimly now, only very dimly aware that here I
must . . .
... Septimeus' voice, all shuddery, saying that if ever a place was haunted, this must surely be that place. And Felicius must have agreed, for even as my dying essence began to permeate the ground, sinking down into . . .
. . . sensed that the group was moving away, returning by an alternate route to the villa. But by then I did not care; nothing had meaning any longer. A great peace seemed to be falling over me like a cloak of darkness.
My spreading, disintegrating spirit sank ever slower
into soft earth, all sentience radiating outward and disappearing in abysses of disembodiment, drawn toward Earth-heart whose warmth is that of the cradle of all souls, and -
And however weak, however insignificant, something of the spirit of myself, some infinitely tiny particle of the intelligence of Titus Crow penetrated or was absorbed into the time-clock.
And simultaneously there came a pinprick of light in Stygian darkness, and an infinitely distant voice cried out to me: 'Titus, oh my Titus - let the clock help you! Only ask of it, seek out its being with your mind, even with a tiny spark of your mind. The clock is yours to command!' And as quickly as it came the voice was gone, leaving
only . . .
. . . Tiania! And her voice crying out to me had awakened and aroused all that was left of life, even disembodied life, in me. 'Seek out its being,' she cried: 'the being of the clock, its mind, its psyche. Seek it out and command.' And I did!
The pinprick of light became a floodlight, a magnificent expanding beam of light and knowledge and reason that dispelled darkness and left my spirit whole, intact, with the clock once more mine to command more properly -but buried still! And somewhere my poor body lay, even now growing colder, colder, its capacity to support life dwindling, blood congealing, brain gelling . . .
. . . urgency gripped me, I ... must be very loosely packed. The question remained: would my time-clock be able to surface, push the tons of earth above out of its way and . . .
. . . with the merest pressure of my mind! It must have seemed like an eruption. Tons of earth geysering to the sky, and the time-clock a lava-bomb that ...
. . . had doubtless seen the aerial display, indeed were
even now staring up at me, or rather at the clock, as I flew my machine in a great circle, desperately scanning the whole area of moors for sight of my empty shell of a body. All of them gazed skyward, fear staring straight out of their faces, terror in the trembling arms they threw up before their eyes. All except Felicius himself who knelt, oblivious of all else, on a path that wound in gorse and heather. And beneath his hands and bowed head, hidden almost in the white folds of his flowing toga under which his shoulders moved in unmistakable emotion as he sobbed shamelessly - a motionless form!
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