"C. L. Moore - Fruit Of Knowledge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

speechless for an instant. Then he purs~d his pink mouth to whistle softly.
"Why," he stammered, "you . . . you're the Queen of Air and Darkness!"
Smiling up at him from the corners of her eyes, the woman nodded. The cherub
stared at her big-eyed for a moment longer, too overcome for speech. Then,
suddenly, he beat his rainbow pinions together and darted off through the
trees without another word, the translucent air rippling in a lazy,
half-visible wake behind him. Lilith looked after him with a shadowy smile on
her face. He was going to warn Adam. The smile deepened. Let him.
Lilith turned for one last glance into the mirror of the pool at the strange
new shape she had just put on. It was the newest thing in creation-not even
God knew about it. And rather surprisingly, she thought she was going to like
it. She did not feel nearly as stifled and heavy as she had expected to feel,
and there was something distinctly pleasant in the softness of the breeze
pouring caressingly about her body, the fragrance of springtime sweet in her
nostrils, the grass under
her bare feet. The Garden was beautiful with a beauty she had not realized
until she saw it through human eyes. Everything she saw through them, indeed,
was curiously different now. Here in this flesh all her faculties seemed
refocused, as if she, who had always seen with such crystal clarity, now
looked through rainbows at everything she saw. But it was a pleasant
refocusing. She wished she had longer to enjoy her tenancy in this five-sensed
flesh she shared with Adam.
But she had very little time. She glanced up toward the bright, unchanging
glory above the trees as if she could pierce the floor of heaven and see God
resting on the unimaginable splendor of the Throne while the seraphim chanted
in long, shining rows about him. At any moment he might stir and lean forward
over Eden, looking down. Lilith instinctively shrugged her shadowy garment
closer about her. If he did not look too closely, he might not pierce that
shadow. But if he did- A little thrill of excitement, like forked lightning,
went through the strange new flesh she wore. She liked danger.
She bent over the pool for one last look at herself, and the pool was a great,
dim eye looking back at her, almost sentient, almost aware of her. This was a
living Garden. The translucent air quivered with a rhythmic pulsing through
the trees; the ground was resilient under her feet; vines drew back to let her
pass beneath them. Lilith, turning away through the swimming air after the
cherub, puzzled a little as she walked through the parting trees. The relation
was very close between flesh and earth-perhaps her body was so responsive to
the beauty of the Garden because it aped so closely flesh that had been a part
of the Garden yesterday. And if even she felt that kinship, what must Adam
feel, who was himself earth only yesterday?
The Garden was like a vast, half-sentient entity all around her, pulsing
subtly with the pulse of the lucent air. Had God drawn from this immense and
throbbing fecundity all the life which peopled Eden? Was Adam merely an
extension of it, a focus and intensification of the same life which pulsed
through the Garden? Creation was too new; she could only guess.
She thought, too, of the Tree of Knowledge as she walked smoothly through the
trees. That Tree, tempting and forbidden. Why? Was God testing Man somehow?
Was Man then, not quite finished, after all? Was there any flaw in Eden?
Suddenly she knew that there must be. Her very presence here was proof of it,
for she, above all others, had no right to intrude into this magical closed