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

long moment neither spoke. Then Adam said in a marveling voice, resonant and
deep:
"You. . . you're just as I knew you'd be- I knew you'd be somewhere, if I
could only find you. 'Where were you hiding?"
With an effort Lilith mastered this odd, swimming warmth in her which she did
not understand. After all, he was nothing but a certain limited awareness
housed in newly shaped flesh, and it made no real difference at all what shape
that flesh wore. Her business was too dangerous for her to linger here
admiring him because by some accident he was pleasing to the eyes of her newly
acquired body. She made her voice like honey in her throat and looked up at
him under her lashes, crooning:
"I wasn't here at all, until you thought of me."
"Until I-" Adam's golden brows met.
"God made you in His image," said Lilith, fluttering the lashes. "There's so
much of God in you still-didn't you know you could create, too, if you desired
strongly enough?"
She remembered that deep need of his pulsing out and out in great, demanding
waves from the Garden, and how it had seemed a call addressed to her alone.
She had delighted as she yielded to it, deliberately subordinating her will to
the will of the unseen caller in the Garden. She had let it draw her down out
of the swimming void, let it mold flesh around her in the shape it chose,
until all her being was incased in the strange, soft, yielding substance which
was proving so treacherously responsive to the things she was encountering in
Eden.
Adam shook his curly head uncomprehendingly. "You weren't here. I couldn't
find you," he repeated, as if he had not heard her. "I watched all day among
the animals, and they were all in twos but Man. I knew you must be somewhere.
I knew just how you'd look. I
thought I'd call you Eve when I found you-Eve, the Mother of All Living. Do
you like it?"
"It's a good name," murmured Lilith, coming nearer to him, "but not for me.
I'm Lilith, who came out of the dark because you needed me." She smiled a
heady smile at him, and the shadowy garment drew thin across her shoulders as
she lifted her arms. Adam seemed a little uncertain about what to do with his
own arms as she clasped her hands behind his neck and tiptoed a little,
lifting her face.
"Lilith?" he echoed in a bemused voice. "I like the sound. What does it mean?"
"Never mind," she crooned in her sweetest voice. "I came because you wanted
me." And then, in a murmur: "Bend your head, Adam. I want to show you
something-"


It was the first kiss in Eden. 'When it was over, Lilith opened her eyes and
looked up at Adam aghast, so deeply moved by the pleasantness of that kiss
that she could scarcely remember the purpose that had prompted it. Adam
blinked dizzily down at her. He had found what to do with his arms. He
stammered, still in that bemused voice:
"Thank God, you did come! I wish He could have sent you sooner. We-"
Lilith recovered herself enough to murmur gently: "Don't you understand, dear?
God didn't send me. It was you, yourself, waiting and wanting me, that let me