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

lanterns. Can't you see it?"
Adam was silent. She glanced up at him. His eyes were shut and a look of
intense longing was on his face in the twilight. There was silence about them
for a long while. Presently she felt the tenseness of his body slacken beside
her. He breathed out in a long sigh.
"I think there is a Tree of Life," he said. "I think it's in the center of the
Garden near the other Tree. I'm sure it's there. The fruit are pale, just as
you thought. They send out a light like moonlight in the dark. Tomorrow we'll
taste them."
And Lilith relaxed against his shoulder with a sigh of her own. Tomorrow he
would be immortal, like herself. She listened anxiously, and still heard the
faraway battle cries of the seraphim echoing through the sky. War in heaven
and peace on earth- Through the deepening twilight of Eden no sound came
except the music of the water and, somewhere off through the trees, a crooning
lullaby in a tiny, piping voice as some cherub sang himself to sleep.
Somewhere nearer other small voices squabbled drowsily a while, then fell
silent. The most delightful lassitude was stealing over Lilith's
body. She turned her cheek against Adam's shoulder and felt that cloudy
fogging of the senses which she was coming to know so well- close like water
above her head.
And the evening and the morning were the eighth day.


Lilith woke first. Birds were singing gloriously, and as she lay there on
Adam's shoulder a cherub flashed across the stream on dazzling wings, caroling
at the top of his piping voice. He did not see them. The pleasant delirium of
a spring morning filled the whole wakening Garden, and Lilith sat up with a
smile. Adam scarcely stirred. Lilith looked down at him with a glow of
tenderness that alarmed her. She was coming to identify herself with Adam, as
Adam was one with the Garden-this flesh was a treacherous thing.
Suddenly, blindingly, she knew that. Terror of what it was doing to the entity
which was Lilith rolled over her in a great wave, and without thinking, almost
without realizing what she did, she sprang up and out of the flesh that was
betraying her. Up, up through the crystal morning she sprang, impalpable as
the air around her. Up and up until the Adam that flesh had valued too highly
was invisible, and the very treetops that hid him were a feathery green blur
and she could see the walls that closed the Garden in, the rivers running out
of it like four great blades of silver in the morning sun.
Beside the sleeping Adam nothing was left but the faintest blur of a woman
shape, wrapped in shadow that made it almost invisible against the moss. The
eye could scarcely have made it out there under the trees.
Lilith swam delightfully through the bright, still emptiness of the early
morning. From here she could hear quite clearly the strong hosannahs of the
seraphim pouring out in mighty golden choruses over the jasper walls. Whatever
trouble had raged in heaven yesterday, today it was resolved. She scarcely
troubled her mind about it.
She was free-free of the flesh and the terrifying weakness that had gone with
it. She could see clearly now, no longer deluded by the distortions of value
that had made life in that flesh so confusing. Her thoughts were not colored
by it any more. Adam was nothing but a superb vessel now, brimmed with the