"C. L. Moore - The Tree of Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

THE TREE OF LIFE


Over time-ruined Illar the searching planes swooped and circled.
Northwest Smith, peering up at them with a steelpale stare from the shelter of
a half-collapsed temple, thought of vultures wheeling above, carrion. All day
long now they had been raking these ruins for him. Presently, he knew, thirst
would begin to parch his throat and hunger to gnaw at him. There was neither
food nor water in these ancient Martian ruins, and he knew that it could be
only a matter of time before the urgencies of his own body would drive him out
to signal those wheeling Patrol ships and trade his hardwon liberty for food
and drink. He crouched lower under the shadow of the temple arch and cursed
the accuracy of the Patrol gunner whose flame-blast had caught his dodging
ship just at the edge of IllarтАЩs ruins.
Presently it occurred to him that in most Martian temples of the ancient
days an ornamental well had stood in the outer court for the benefit of
wayfarers. Of course all water in it would be a million years dry now,тАЩ but
for lack of anything better to do he rose from his seat at the edge of the
collapsed
central dome and made his cautious way by still intact corridors toward the
front of the temple. He paused in a tangle of wreckage at the courtyardтАЩs edge
and looked out across the sun-drenched expanse of pavement toward that ornate
well that once had served travelers who passed by here in the days when Mars
was a green plan~et.
It was an unusually elaborate well, and amazingly well preserved. Its rim had
been inlaid with a mosaic pattern whose symbolism must once have borne deep
meaning, and above it in a great fan of time-defying bronze an elaborate
grille-work portrayed the inevitable tree-of-life pattern which тАШso often
appears in the symbolism of the three worlds. Smith looked at it a bit
incredulously from his shelter, it was so miraculouslypreserved amidst all
this chaos of broken stone, casting a delicate tracery of shadow on the sunny
pavement as perfectly as it must have done a million years agO when dusty
travelers paused here to drink. He could picture them filing in at noontime
through the great gates thatтАФ The vision vanished abruptly as his questing
eyes made the
circle of the ruined walls. There had been no gate. He could not find a trace
of it anywhere around the outer wall of the court. The only entranc├з here, as
nearly as he could tell from the foundations that remained, had been the door
in whose ruins he now stood. Queer. This must have been a private court, then,
its great grille-crowned well reserved for the u~e of the priests. Or waitтАФhad
there not been a priest-king Illar after whom the city was named? A
wizard-king, so legend said, who ruled temple as well as palace with an iron
hand. This elaborately patterned well, of material royal enough to withstand
the weight of ages, might well have been sacrosanct for the use of that
long-dead monarch. It mightтАФ Across the sun-bright pavement swept the shadow
of a
plane. Smith dodged back into deeper hiding while the ship circled Jow over
the courtyard. And it was then, as he crouched against a crumbled wall and
waited, motionless, for the danger to pass, that he became aware for the first
time of a sound that startled him so he could scarcely credit his earsтАФa