"C. L. Moore - Julhi" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

asteroid, and one brief, perfume-dizzied night under the reeling stars. And
there had been a space-pirate's wench in stolen jewels, flame-gun belted, who
came to him in a camptown on the edge of Martian civilization, where the
drylands begin. There was that rosy Martian girl in the garden palace by the
canal, where the moons went wheeling through the sky. . . . And once, very
long ago, in a garden upon Earth-he closed his eyes and saw again the
moonlight of home silvering a fair, high head, and level eyes looking into his
and a mouth that quivered, saying-
He drew a long, unsteady breath and opened his eyes again. The pale steel
stare of them was expressionless, but that last, deep-buried memory had burnt
like a heat-ray, and
he knew she had tasted the pain of it, and was exulting. The feathery crest
that swept backward from her forehead was trembling rhythmically, and the
colors blowing through it had deepened in intensity and were changing with
bewildering swiftness. But her still face had not changed, although he thought
there was a softening in the brilliance of her eyes, as if she were
remembering too.
When she spoke, the sustained, fluting note of her voice was breathless as a
whisper, and he realized anew how infinitely more eloquent it was than a voice
which spoke in words. She could infuse into the vibrant lilt blood-stirring
intensities and soft, rich purrs that went sweeping along his nerves like
velvet. His whole body was responding to the pitch of her voice. She was
playing upon him as upon a harp, evoking chords of memory and sending burring
thrills down his back and setting the blood athrob in his pulses by the very
richness and deepness of her tone. And it strummed not only upon the responses
of his body but also upon the chords of his very mind, waking thoughts to
match her own, compelling him into the channels she desired. Her voice was
purest magic, and he had not even the desire to resist it.
"They are sweet memories-sweet?" she purred caressingly. "The women of the
worlds you know-the women who have lain in those arms of yours-whose mouths
have clung to yours-do you remember?"
There was the most flagrant mesmerism in her voice as it ran on vibrantly over
him-again he thought of fingers upon harp-strings-evoking the melodies she
desired, strumming at his memories with words like hot, sweet flames. The room
misted before his eyes, and that singing voice was a lilt through timeless
space, no longer speaking in phrases but in a throbbingly inarticulate purr,
and his body was no more than a sounding-board for the melodies she played.
Presently the mesmerism of her tone took on a different pitch. The humming
resolved itself into words again, thrilling through him now more clearly than
spoken phrases.
' 'And in all these remembered women''-it sang-"in all these you remember me.
. . . For it was I in each of them whom you remember-that little spark that
was myself-and I am all women who love and are loved-my arms held you-do you
not remember?"
In the midst of that hypnotic murmuring he did remember, and recognized dimly
through the reeling tumult of his blood some great, veiled truth he could not
understand.
The crest above her forehead trembled in slow, languorous rhythm, and rich
colors flowed through it in tints that caressed the eyes-velvety purples, red
like embers, flame colors and sunset shades. When she rose upon her couch with