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

lining. The instruments, cryptographic, unconventional, were
still and silent. The sphere shifted and rolled as the last of
the liquid dripped from the great gash in its side.
Momentarily, Glogauer's eyes opened and closed, then his
mouth stretched in a kind of yawn and his tongue fluttered
and he uttered a groan that turned into a ululation.
He heard himself. The Voice of Tongues, he thought.
The language of the unconscious. But he could not guess
what he was saying.
His body became numb and he shivered. His passage
through time had not been easy and even the thick fluid had
not wholly protected him, though it had doubtless saved his
life. Some ribs were certainly broken. Painfully, he straight-
ened his arms and legs and began to crawl over the slippery
plastic towards the crack in the machine. He could see harsh
sunlight, a sky like shimmering steel. He pulled himself half-
way through the crack, closing his eyes as the full strength
of the sunlight struck then). He lost consciousness.
Christmas term, 1949. He was nine years old, born two.
years after his father had reached England from Austria.
The other children were screaming with laughter in the
gravel of the playground. The game had begun earnestly
enough and somewhat nervously Karl had joined in in the
same spirit. Now he was crying.
"Let me down! Please, Mervyn, stop it!"
They had tied him with his arms spreadeagled against the
wire-netting of the playground fence. It bulged outwards
under his weight and one of the posts threatened to come
loose. Mervyn Williams, the boy who had proposed the game,
began, to shake the post so that Karl was swung heavily
back and forth on the netting.
"Stop it!"
He saw that his cries only encouraged them and he
clenched his teeth, becoming silent.
He slumped, pretending unconsciousness; the school ties
they had used as bonds cut into his wrists. He heard the
children's voices drop.
"Is he all right?" Molly Turner was whispering.
"He's only kidding." Williams replied uncertainly.
He felt them untying him, their fingers fumbling with the
knots. Deliberately, he sagged, then fell to his knees, grazing
them on the gravel, and dropped face down to the ground.
Distantly, for he was half-convinced by his own deception,
he heard their worried voices.
Williams shook him.
"Wake up, Karl. Stop mucking about."
He stayed where he was, losing his sense of time until he
heard Mr. Matson's voice over the general babble.
"What on earth were you doing, Williams?"
"It was a play, sir, about Jesus. Karl was being Jesus.