"Judith Merril - The Shrine of Temptation" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

Ten years later, JM was into exceptional children, still. Lucky is bracketed with Henrietta for
reasons of logic rather than chronology. JM's first story written around a cover: Fantastic Stories
of ImaginationтАФApril, 1962.

The Shrine of Temptation
The name his own people called him was Lallayall. That was, of course, just his calling-name, and
because it meant almost the same thing that he meant to us, we called him Lucky.
This was no transgression of courtesy, or culture-arrogance on our part. His true name, after the
fashion of his people, was already long, and growing, a descriptive catalogue useful only for records and
ritual occasions. A calling-name may be anything derived from the whole, so long as it suits, and the
called one will answer it. Lucky was delighted to have a new nickname from us, in our language.
He was, when we came to the island, just eight years old as we reckon. His people count differently;
to them, he was halfway through his Third Decade; in five more seasons, he would undergo the
Apprenticeship Rites that would end his first age. Either way, he was just past the midpoint between
babyhood and puberty. Like most of his raceтАФand all others but us on the islandтАФhe was
brown-skinned and dark-eyed, black-haired. Like most of his age, he was eager, questioning, rational,
mystical, obedient, rebellious,-clumsy and courteous, graceful and quick. Like too few of them, he was
generally happy and always healthy, serenely certain of parental love, highly intelligent and well-informed.
Certain of these things, and all of them to a degree, were the product of island culture. Lucky lived in
a world he accepted as having been designed primarily for his own benefit and, largely, it had. Among his
people, there were no fears, hungers, troubles, or questions that could not be voiced, and noneтАФwithin
the limits of the island's capacityтАФthat would not be answered to the best extent of the child's
understanding. All children were swift and bright; but among them, Lucky was especially blessed. Thus,
his name.
He was the first in his age group to find his apprenticeship. When we came, he already knew what he
wanted. A short time before that, he had spent his days, like the others, wandering from hunters to
planners to makers to teachers to planters to singers, spreading' his wonders and askings impartially. The
others still wandered, multiply curious, questioning the weavers and fishers and carpenters, healers and
painters and crafters of food. It might be three or four seasons yet until, one by one, they singled out the
preferred occupations to which they'd be bound in training at First Rites.
But Lucky already knew what he wanted. Before we came, he went, day after day, to the Shrine, or
the House of Shrinemen, squatting patiently in the courtyard, waiting for the chance to carry sand (for
stone scrubbing) or water or polishing cloths or firewood for a Shrineman, listening in silence to such talk
as was carried on in his presence, storing up questions to ask them, hallall, when the time should be ripe.
Part of each day he sat at the feet of the Figures, self-hypnotized by gleaming amber and blue, spinning
out glorious fantasies of the Rebirth.
(His own fascination with the Shrine and Shrinemen, and the weight of mystery he gave to some
words and phrasesтАФwhich I have tried to translate with capitals and occasional sonorous phrases in this
accountтАФled us later to a misunderstanding of some proportion. But, hallall . . .)
His persistence was already recognized in the village.
The other children first, then his mothers and fathers, had noticed his absence from forest, fields, and
shops. Then the Shrinemen began teasing him with familiar fondness at evening gatherings and rest-day
games, so that everyone started to realize what he had chosen. And if it was something of a shock to
parents and teachers, the boy did not know it.
Perhaps because we settled as close to the Shrine as we dared doтАФperhaps out of the same
fascination with the unknown that had drawn him to the ShrineтАФLucky was our first and most frequent
visitor, and became, either in his own person or as interpreter, our chief source of information about both
the Shrine and the islanders. He did not, at first, realize that our preoccupation with the Shrine was as
great as his own; we did not share his confident artlessness in question-asking. I do not know just how he
explained us to himself at first, or whether he even tried to. Perhaps he just waited to learn what he