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

Obscurely it was like the beat of marching feet, the perfect timing of a
dance. They were moving faster now, and the colors that swept through the
leader's crest were echoed in those of the crowd. There was no opposition of
contrast or complement here; the ranks followed their leader's harmonies in
perfect exactitude. His thoughts were theirs.
Smith watched an exquisitely tender rose shiver through that central crest,
darken to crimson, sweep on through richness of deepening tones to infra-red
and mount in an eloquence of sheer color that stirred his being, even though
he could not understand. He realized the intense and rising emotion which
swept the crowd as the eloquence of the leader went vibrating through their
senses.
He could not have shared that emotion, or understood a fraction of what was
taking place, but as he watched, something gradually became clear to him.
There was a glory about them. These beings were not innately the
sensation-hungry vampires Julhi had told him of. His instinct had been right.
No one could watch them in their concerted harmony of emotion and miss wholly
the lofty ardor which stirred them now. Julhi must be a degenerate among them.
She and her followers might represent one side of these incomprehensible
people, but it was a baser side, and not one that could gain strength among
the majority. For he sensed sublimity among them. It thrilled through his
dazzled brain from that intent, worshipping crowd about him.
And knowing this, rebellion suddenly surged up within him, and he strained in
awakening anger at the mistiness which held him impotent. Julhi felt the pull.
He saw her turn, anger still blazing in her crest and her single eye glowing
with a tinge of red. From her rigid lips came a furious hissing, and colors he
could not name rippled through the plume in surges eloquent of an anger that
burned like a heatgun's blast. Something in the single-minded ardor of the
crowd, the message of the orator, must have fanned the flame of her for at the
first hint of rebellion in her captive she turned suddenly upon the crowd
which hemmed her in and began to shoulder her way free.
They did not seem to realize her presence or feel the force of her pushing
them aside. Devoutly all eyes were riveted upon the leader, all the feathery
crests vibrated in perfect unison with his own. They were welded into an
oblivious whole by the power of his eloquence. Julhi made her way out of the
thronged square without distracting a single eye.
Smith followed like a shadow behind her, rebellious but impotent. She swept
down the angled streets like a wind of fury. He was at a loss to understand
the consuming anger which blazed higher with every passing moment, though they
were vague suspicions in his mind that he must have guessed rightly as he
watched the crested orator's effect upon the throng-that she was indeed
degenerate, at odds with the rest, and hated them the more fiercely for it.
She swept him on along deserted streets whose walls shimmered now and again
into green-wreathed ruins, and took shape again. The ruins themselves seemed
to flicker
curiously with dark and light that swept over them in successive waves, and
suddenly he realized that time was passing more slowly here than in his own
plane. He was watching night and day go by over the ruins of that elder Vonng.
They were coming now into a courtyard of strange, angular shape. As they
entered, the half-forgotten blur at the back of his mind which was Apri glowed
into swift brilliance, and he saw that the light which streamed from her was