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

moveless in an unhinged jaw. Behind the bowed opening he could see the red,
fluted tissue of flesh within.
Above that single, clear, deep-lashed eye something sprang backward from her
brow in a splendid sweep, something remotely feather-like, yet no such feather
as was ever fledged upon any bird alive. It was exquisitely iridescent, and
its fronds shivered with blowing color at the slight motion of her breathing.
For the rest-well, as the lines of a lap-dog travesty the clean, lean grace of
a racing greyhound, so humanity's shape travestied the serpentine loveliness
of her body. And it was definitely humanity that aped her form, not herself
aping humanity. Somehow she was so right in every flowing, curving line, so
unerringly fashioned toward some end he could not guess, yet to which
instinctively he conceded her perfect fitness.
There was a fluidity about her, a litheness that partook more of the serpent's
rippling flow than of any warm-blooded creature's motion, but her body was not
like any being, warm-blooded or cold, that he had ever seen before. From the
waist up she was human, but below all resemblance ended. And yet she was so
breath-takingly lovely. Any attempt to describe the alien beauty of her lower
limbs would sound grotesque, and she was not grotesque even in her unnamable
shape, even in the utter weirdness of her face.
That clear, unwinking eye turned its gaze upon Smith. She lay there
luxuriously upon her black couch, ivory-pale against the darkness of it, the
indescribable strangeness of her body lolling with a serpent's grace upon the
cushions. He felt the gaze of that eye go through him, searching out all the
hidden places in his brain and-flickering casually over the lifetime that lay
behind him. The feathery crest quivered very gently above her head.
He met the gaze steadily. There was no expression upon that changeless face,
for she could not smile, and the look in her single eye was meaningless to
him. He had no way of guessing what emotions were stirring behind the alien
mask. He had never realized before how essential is the mobility of the mouth
in expressing moods, and hers was fixed, immobile, for ever stretched into its
heart-shaped arch-like a lyre-frame, he thought, but irrevocably dumb, surely,
for such a mouth as hers, in its immovable unhinged jaw, could never utter
human speech.
And then she spoke. The shock of it made him blink, and it was a moment before
he realized just how she was accomplishing the impossible. The fluted tissue
within the arched opening of her mouth had begun to vibrate like harp-strings,
and the humming he had heard before went thrilling through the air. Beside him
he was aware of Apri shuddering uncontrollably as the humming strengthened and
swelled, but he was listening too closely to realize her save subconsciously;
for there was in that humming something that- that, yes, it was rounding into
the most queerly uttered phrases, in a sort of high, unutterably sweet singing
note, like the sound of a violin. With her moveless lips she could not
articulate, and her only enunciation came from the varied intensities of that
musical tone. Many languages could not be spoken so, but the High Venusian's
lilt is largely that of pitch, every word-sound bearing as many meanings as it
has degrees of intensity, so that the exquisitely modulated notes
which came rippling from her harp-like mouth bore as clear a meaning as if she
were enunciating separate words.
And it was more eloquent than speech. Somehow those singing phrases played
upon other senses than the aural. From the first lilted note he recognized the