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

denizens along toward some yet unseen goal. They turned as Julhi approached,
their expressionless eyes'! fixed on the shadow-wraith behind her which was
Smith. Nol sound passed between them, but he felt in his increasingly
receptive brain faint echoes of thoughts that were flashing through the air.
It puzzled him until he saw how they were
communicating-by those exquisitely feathery crests which swept backward above
their foreheads.
It was a speech of colors. The crests quivered unceasingly, and colors far
beyond the spectrum his earthly eyes could see blew through them in
bewildering sequence. There was a rhythm about it that he gradually perceived,
though he could not follow it. By the vagrant echoes of their thoughts which
he could catch he realized that the harmony of the colors reflected in a
measure the harmony of the two minds which produced them. He saw Julhi's crest
quiver with a flush of gold, arid those of the rest were royally purple. Green
flowed through the gold, and a lusciously rosy tinge melted through the purple
of the rest. But all this took place faster than he could follow, and before
he was aware of what was happening a discord in the thoughts that sounded in
his mind arose, and while Julhi's crest glowed orange those of the rest were
angrily scarlet.
Violence had sprung up between them, whose origin he could not quite grasp
though fragments of their quarrel flashed through his brain from each of the
speakers, and wildly conflicting colors rippled through the plumes. Julhi's
ran the gamut of a dozen spectra in tints that were eloquent of fury. The air
quivered as she turned away, drawing him after her. He was at a loss to
understand the suddenness of the rage which had swept over her so consumingly,
but he could catch echoes of it vibrating through his mind from her own hot
anger. She flashed on down the street with blurring swiftness, her crest
trembling in swift, staccato shivers.
She must have been too furious to notice where she went, for she had plunged
now straight into that streaming crowd which poured through the streets, and
before she could win free again the force of it had swallowed her up. She had
no desire to join the torrent, and Smith could feel her struggling violently
against it, the fury rising as her efforts to be free were vain. Colors like
curses raved through her trembling crest.
But the tide was too strong for her. They were carried
along irresistibly past the strangely angled buildings, over the patterned
pavements, toward an open space which Smith began to catch glimpses of through
the houses ahead of them. When they reached the square it was already nearly
filled. Ranks of crested, gliding creatures thronged it, their one-eyed faces,
heart-mouths immobile, were lifted toward a figure on a dais in the center. He
sensed in Julhi a quivering of hatred as he faced that figure, but in it he
thought he saw a serenity and a majesty of bearing which even Julhi's
indescribable and lovely presence did not have. The rest waited in packed
hundreds, eyes fixed, crests vibrating.
When the square was filled he watched the being on the dais lift undulant arms
for quiet, and over the crowd a rigid stillness swept. The feathery crests
poised motionless above intent heads. Then the plume of the leader began to
vibrate with a curious rhythm, and over all the crowd the antennae-like plumes
quivered in unison. Every ripple of that fronded crest was echoed to the last
shiver by the crowd. There was something infinitely stirring in the rhythm.