"C. L. Moore - Greater Than Gods" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

Greater Than Gods

The desk was glass-clear steel, the mirror above it a window that opened upon
distance and sight and sound whenever the televisor buzzer rang. The two
crystal cubes on the desk were three-dimensional photographs of a sort
undreamed of before the Twenty-third Century dawned. But between them on the
desk lay a letter whose message was older that the history of writing itself.
"My darling-" it began in a man's strongly slanting handwriting. But there
Bill Cory had laid down his pen and run despairing fingers through his hair,
looking from one crystal-cubed photograph to the other and swearing a little
under his breath. It was fine stuff, he told himself savagely, when a man
couldn't even make up his mind which of two girls he wanted to marry. Biology
House of Science City, that trusted so faithfully the keenness and clarity of
Dr. William Cory's decisions, would have shuddered to see him now.
For the hundredth time that afternoon he looked from one girl's face to the
other, smiling at him from the crystal cubes, and chewed his lip unhappily. On
his left, in the translucent block that had captured an immortal moment when
dark Marta Mayhew smiled, the three-dimensional picture looked out at him with
a flash of violet eyes. Dr. Marta Mayhew of Chemistry House, ivory whiteness
and satin blackness. Not at all the sort of picture the mind conjures up of a
leading chemist in Science City which houses the greatest scientists in the
world.
Bill Cory wrinkled his forehead and looked at the other girl. Sallie Carlisle
dimpled at him out of the crystal, as real as life itself to the last flying
tendril of fair curls that seemed to float on a breeze frozen eternally into
glass. Bill reached out to turn the cube a little, bringing the delicate line
of her profile into view, and it was as if time stood still in the crystalline
deeps and pretty Salle in the breathing flesh paused for an eternal moment
with her profile turned away.
After a long moment Bill Cory sighed and picked up his pen. After the
"darling" of the letter he wrote firmly, "Sallie."
"Dr. Cory," hesitated a voice at the door. Bill looked up, frowning. Miss
Brown blinked at him nervously behind her glasses. "Dr. Ashley's-"
"Don't announce me, Brownie," interrupted a languid voice behind her. "I want
to catch him loafing. Ah, Bill, writing love letters? May I come in?"
"Could I stop you?" Bill's grin erased the frown from his forehead. The tall
and tousled young man in the doorway was Charles Ashley, head of Telepathy
House, and though their acquaintance had long been on terms of good-natured
insult, behind it lay Bill's deep recognition of a quality of genius in Ashley
that few men ever attain. No one could have risen to the leadership of
Telepathy House whose mind did not encompass many more levels of infinite
understanding than the ordinary mind even recognizes.
"I've worked myself into a stupor," announced the head of Telepathy House,
yawning. "Come on up to the Gardens for a swim, huh?"
"Can't." Bill laid down his pen. "I've got to see the pups-"
"Damn the pups! You think Science City quivers every time those little mutts
yap! Let Miss Brown look after 'em. She knows more than you do about genetics,
anyhow. Some clay the Council's going to find it out and you'll go back to
working for a living."
"Shut up," requested Bill with a grin. "How are the pups, Miss Brown?"