"Moorcock, Michael - Behold The Man2" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moorcock Michael)

growing along the banks of the river that doubtless ran into
the Dead Sea. It was uneven ground. In outline, it had the
appearance of a stormy lake, frozen and turned yellow and
brown. Beyond the Dead Sea lay Jerusalem. Obviously Christ
had not entered the city for the last time yet. John the
Baptist would have to die before that happened.
The Essenes' way of life was comfortable enough, for all
its simplicity. They had given him a goatskin loincloth .and
a staff and, except for the fact that he was watched by day
and night, he appeared to be accepted as a kind of lay
member of the sect.
Sometimes they questioned him casually about his chariot
the time machine they intended soon to bring in from the
desertand he told them that it had borne him from Egypt
to Syria and then to here. They accepted the miracle calmly.
As he had suspected, they were used to miracles.
The Essenes had seen stranger things than his time ma-
chine. They had seen men walk on water and angels descend
to and from heaven; they had heard the voice of God and
His archangels as well as the tempting voice of Satan and
his minions. They wrote all these things down in their vel-
lum scrolls. They were merely a record of the supernatural
as their other scrolls were records of their daily lives and
of the news that traveling members of their sect brought to
them.
They lived constantly in the presence of God and spoke
to God and were answered by God when they had sufficiently
mortified their flesh and starved themselves and chanted their
prayers beneath the blazing sun of Judaea.
Karl Glogauer grew his hair long and let his beard come
unchecked. He mortified his flesh and starved himself and
chanted his prayers beneath the sun, as they did. But he
rarely heard God and only once thought he saw an arch-
angel with wings of fire.
In spite of his willingness to experience the Essenes' hal-
lucinations, Glogauer was disappointed, but he was surprised
that he felt so well considering all the self-inflicted hardships
he had to undergo, and he also felt relaxed in the company
of these men and women who were undoubtedly insane.
Perhaps it was because their insanity was not so very dif-
ferent from his own that after a while he stopped wondering
about it.
John the Baptist returned one evening, striding over the
hills followed by twenty or so of his closest disciples. Glo-
gauer saw him as he prepared to drive the goats into their
cave for the night. He waited for John to get closer.
The Baptist's face was grim, but his expression softened
as he saw Glogauer. He smiled and grasped him by the
upper arm in the Roman fashion.
"Well, Emmanuel, you are our friend, as I thought you