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

into a pitch of wild intensity which must have been too great for his human
fiber to endure; for as the turmoil went on he felt himself losing all grasp
upon reality, and catapulting upon the forces that ravaged him into a vast and
soothing blankness which swallowed up all unrest in the nirvana of its dark.
After an immeasurable while he felt himself wakening, and fought against it
weakly. No use. A light was broadening through that healing night which all
his stubbornness could not resist. He had no sensation of physical awakening,
but without opening his eyes he saw the room more clearly than he had ever
seen it before, so that there were tiny rainbows of light around all the queer
objects there, and Apri-
He had forgotten her until now, but with this strange awareness that was not
of the eyes alone he saw her standing before the couch upon which he leaned in
Julhi's arms. She stood rigid, rebellion making a hopeless mask of her face,
and there was agony in her eyes. All about her like a bright nimbus the light
rayed out. She was incandescent, a torch whose brilliance strengthened until
the light radiating from
her was almost palpable.
He sensed in Julhi's body, clinging to his, a deep-stirring exultation as the
light swelled about her. She luxuriated in it, drank it in like wine. He felt
that for her it was indeed tangible, and that he looked upon it now, in this
queer new way, through senses that saw it as she did. Somehow he was sure that
with normal eyes it would not have been visible. Dimly he was remembering what
had been said about the light which opened a door into Julhi's alien world.
And he felt no surprise when it became clear to him that the couch no longer
supported his body-that he had no body-that he was suspended weightlessly in
midair, Julhi's arms still elapsing him in a queer, unphysical grip, while the
strangely banded walls moved downward all about him. He had no sensation of
motion himself; yet the walls seemed to fall away below and he was floating
freely past the mounting bands of mist that paled and brightened swiftly until
he was bathed in the blinding light that ringed the top.
There was no ceiling. The light was a blaze of splendor all about him, and out
of that blaze, very slowly, very nebulously, the streets of Vonng took shape,
it was not that Vonng which had stood once upon the little Venusian island.
The buildings were the same as those which must once have risen where their
ruins now stood, but there was a subtle distortion of perspective which would
have made it clear to him, even had he not known, that this city stood in
another plane of existence than his own. Sometimes amidst the splendor he
thought he caught glimpses of vine-tangled ruins. A wall would shimmer before
his eyes for an instant and crumble into broken blocks, and the pavement would
be debris-strewn and mossy. Then the vision faded and the wall stood up
unbroken again. But he knew he was looking through the veil which parted the
two worlds so narrowly, upon the ruins which were all that remained of Vonng
in his own plane.
It was the Vonng which had been shaped for the needs of two worlds
simultaneously. He could see, without really understanding, how some of the
queerly angled buildings and
twisted streets which could have no meaning to the eyes of a man were
patterned for the use of these gliding people. He saw in the pavement the
curious medallions set by the long-dead sorcerers to pin two planes together
at this point of intersection.