"Michael Moorcock - The Winds of Limbo" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

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The Winds of LimboThe Winds of Limbo
By Michael Moorcock

When the Fireclown spoke, promising salvation and life to the dying planet, his
listeners trembled. What was the secret of his hypnotic power? Did he plan to
save Earth for all mankind-or to make it his slave-planet?

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS a vast cavern. Part of it was natural, part of it had been hollowed out
by the machines of men. Some parts were deep in dancing shadows and others were
brilliantly illuminated by a great blazing mass-a roaring, crackling miniature
replica of the sun itself, that hung, constantly quivering and erupting, near
the high roof.
Beneath this blazing orb a tall column rose up as if to meet it, and arms akimbo
upon a platform at the top stood a gross figure, clad in ragged, harlequin
costume. A soft, floppy, conical hat was jammed over his lank, yellow hair; his
fat-rounded face was painted white, his eyes and mouth adorned with smears of
red, yellow and black, and on the ragged red jerkin stretched taut upon his
great belly was a vivid yellow sunburst.
Below this gross harlequin the dense crowd surrounding the column ceased its
movement as he raised an orange hand that seemed to shoot from his torn sleeve
like fingers of flame.
He laughed. It was as if the sun had voiced unearthly humor.
"Speak to us!" the crowd pleaded. "Fireclown! Speak to us!"
He ceased his laughing and looked down at them with a peculiar expression moving
behind the paint. At length he bellowed:
"I am the Fireclown!"
"Speak to us!"
"I am the Fireclown, equipped for your salvation. I am the gift bearer, alive
with the Fire of Life, from which the Earth itself was formed! I am the Earth's
brother. .. ."
A woman in a padded dress representing the body of a lion cried shrilly: "And
what are we?"
"You are maggots feeding off your mother. When you mate it is like corpses
coupling. When you laugh it is the sound of the winds of limbo!"
"Why? Why?" shouted a young man with a lean, mean face and a pointed chin that
could pierce a throat. He leaped exuberantly while his eyes glinted and looked.
"You have shunned the natural life and worshipped the artificial. But you are
not lost-not yet!"
"What shall we do?" sobbed a government official, sweating in the purple jacket
and purple pantaloons of his rank, caught by the ritual enough to fidget and
forget to stay in the shadows. His cry was echoed by the crowd.
"What shall we do?"
"Follow me! I will reinstate you as Children of the Sun and Brothers of the
Earth. Spurn me-and you perish in your artificiality, renounced by Nature on
whom you have turned your proud backs."
And again the clown broke into a laugh. He breathed heavily and roared his