"Moore, C L - Scarlet Dream UC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moore C. L)

SCARLET DREAM


Northwest Smith bought the shawl in the Lakkmanda Markets of Mars. It was one of his chiefest joys to wander through the stalls and stands of that greatest of marketplaces whose wares are drawn from all the planets of the solar system, and beyond. So many songs have been sung and so many tales written of that fascinating chaos called the Lakkmanda Markets that there is little need to detail it here.
He shouldered his way through the colorful cosmopolitan throng, the speech of a thousand races beating in his ears, the mingled odors of perfume and sweat and spice and food and the thousand nameless smells of the place assailing his nostrils. Venders cried their wares in the tongues of a score of worlds.
As he strolled through the thick of the crowd, savoring the confusion and the odors and the sights from lands beyond counting, his eye was caught by a flash of that peculiar geranium scarlet that seems to lift itself bodily from its background and smite the eye with all but physical violence.
It came from a shawl thrown carelessly across a carved chest, typically Martian drylander work by the exquisite detail of that carving, so oddly at variance with the characteristics of the harsh dryland race. He recognized the Venusian origin of the brass tray on the shawl, and knew the heap of carved ivory beasts that the tray held as the work of one of the leastknown races on JupiterТs largest moon, but from all his wide experience he could draw no remembrance of any such woven work as that of the shawl. Idly curious, he paused at the booth and asked of its attendant,
УHow much for the scarf?Ф
The manЧhe was a canal MartianЧglanced over his shoulder and said carelessly, УOh, that. You can have it for half a crisЧgives me a headache to look at the thing.Ф
Smith grinned and said, УIТll give you five dollars.Ф
УTen.Ф
УSix and a half, and thatТs my last offer.Ф
УOh, take the thing.Ф The Martian smiled and lifted the tray of ivory beasts from the chest.
Smith drew out the shawl. It clung to his hands like a live thing, softer and lighter than Martian УlambТs-wool.Ф He felt sure it was woven from the hair of some beast rather than from vegetable fiber, f& the electric clinging of it sparkled with life. And the crazy pattern dazzled him with its utter strangeness. Unlike any pattern he had seen in all the years of his far wanderings, the wild, leaping scarlet threaded its i~ameless design in one continuous, tangled line through the twilight blue of-the background. That dim blue was clouded exquisitely with violet and greenЧsleepy evening colors against which the staring scarlet flamed like something more sinister and alive than color. He felt that he could almost put his hand between the color and the cloth, so vividly did it start up from its background.
УWhere in the universe did this come from?Ф he demanded of the attendant.
The man shrugged.
УWho knows? It came in with a bale of scrap cloth from
New York. I was a little curious about it myself, and called the market-master there to trace it. He says it was sold for scrap by a down-and-out Venusian who claimed heТd found it in a derelict ship floating around one of the asteroids. He didnТt know what nationality the ship had beenЧa very early model, he said, probably one of the first space-ships, made before the identification symbols were adopted. IТve wondered why he sold the thing for scrap. He could have got double the price, anyhow, if heТd made any effort.Ф
УFunny.Ф Smith stared down at the dizzy pattern writhing through the cloth in his hands. УWell, itТs warm and light enough. If it doesnТt drive me crazy trying to follow the pattern, IТll sleep warm at night.Ф
He crumpled it in one hand, the whole six-foot square of it folding easily into his palm, and stuffed the silky bundle into his pocketЧand thereupon forgot it until after his return to his quarters that evening.
He had taken one of the cubicle steel rooms in the great steel lodging-houses the Martian government offers for a very nominal rent to transients. The original purpose was to house those motley hordes of spaceman that swarm every port city of the civilized planets, offering them accommoda.. tions cheap and satisfactory enough so that they will not seek the black byways of the town and there fall in with the denizens of the Martian underworld whose lawlessness is a byword among space sailors.
The great steeL building that housed Smith and countless others was not entirely free from the influences of Martian byways, and if the police had actually searched the place with any degree of thoroughness a large percentage of its dwellers might have been transferred to the EmperorТs prisonsЧ Smith almost certainly among them, for his activities were rarely within the law and though he could not recall at the moment any particularly flagrant sins committed in Lalчkdarol, a charge could certainly have been found against him by the most half-hearted searcher. However, the likelihood of a police raid was very remote, and Smith, as he went
in under the steel portals of the great door, rubbed shoulders with smugglers and pirates and fugitives and sinners of all the sins that keep the spaceways thronged.
In his little cubicle he switched on the light and saw a dozen blurred replicas of himself, reflected dimly in the steel walls, spring into being with the sudden glow. In that curious company he moved forward to a chair and pulled out the crumpled shawl. Shaking it in the mirror-walled room produced a sudden wild writhing of scarlet patterns over walls and floor and ceiling, and for an instant the room whirled in an inexplicable kaleidoscope and he had the impression that the four-dimensional walls had opened suddenly to undreamed-of vastnesses where living scarlet in wild, unruly patterns shivered through the void.
Then in a moment the walls closed in again and the dim reflections ~quieted and became only the images of a tall, brown man with pale eyes, holding a curious shawl in his hands. There was a strange, sensuous pleasure in the clinging of the silky wool to his fingers, the lightness of it, the warmth. He spread it out on the table and traced the screaming scarlet pattern with his finger, trying to follow that one writhing line through the intricacies of its path, and the more he stared the more irritatingly clear it became to him that there must be a purpose in that whirl of color~ that if he stared long enough, surely he must trace it out. . .
When he slept that mght he spread the bright shawl across his bed, and the brilliance of it colored his dreams fantastically. .
That threading scarlet was a labyrinthine path down which he stumbled blindly, and at every turn he looked back and saw himself in myriad replicas, always wandering lost and alone through the pattern of the path. Sometimes it shook itself under his feet; and whenever he thought he saw the end it would writhe into fresh intricacies.-. .
The sky was a great shawl threaded with scarlet lightning that shivered and squirmed as he watched, then wound itself into the familiar, dizzy pattern that became one mighty Word
in a nameless writing, whose meaning he shuddered on the verge of understanding, and woke in icy terror just before the significance of it broke upon his brain.
He slept again, and saw the shawl hanging in a blue dusk the color of its background, stared and stared until the square of it melted imperceptibly into the dimness and the scarlet was a pattern incised lividly upon a gate . . . a gate of strange outline in a high wall, half seen through that curious, cloudy twilight blurred with exquisite patches of green and violet, so that it seemed no mortal twilight, but some strange and lovely evening in a land where the air was suffused with colored mists,- and no winds blew. He felt himself movЧ ing forward, without effort, and the gate opened before him.
He was mounting a long flight of steps. In one of the metamorphoses of dreams it did not surprise him that the gate had vanished, or that he had no remembrance of having climbed the long flight stretching away behind him. The lovely colored twilight still veiled the air, so that he could see but dimly the -steps rising before him and melting into the
mist. -
And now, suddenly, he was aware of a stirring in the dimness, and a girl came flying down the stairsin headlong, stumbling terror. He could see the shadow of it on her face, and her long, bright-colored hair streamed out behind her, and from head to foot she was dabbled with blood. In her blind flight she must not have seen him, for she came plunging downward three steps at a time and blundered full into him as he stood undecided, watching. The impact all but unbalanced him, but his arms closed instinctively about her and for a moment she hung in his embrace, utterly spent, gasping against his broad leather breast and too breathless even to wonder who had stopped her. The smell of fresh blood rose to his nostrils from her dreadfully spattered garments.
Finally she lifted her head and raised a flushed, creamybrown face to him, gulping in air through lips the color of
holly berries. Her dabbled hair, so fantastically golden that it might have been almost. orange, shivered about her as she clung to him with lifted, lovely face. In that dizzy moment he saw that her eyes were sherry-brown with tints of red, and the fantastic, colored beauty of her face had aЧwild tinge of something utterly at odds With anything he had ever known before. It might have been the look in her eyes.
УOh!Ф she gasped. УItЧit has her! Let me go! . . . Let meЧФ
Smith shook her gently.
УWhat has her?Ф he demanded. УWho? Listen to me! YouТre coveind with blood, do you know it? Are you hurt?Ф
She shook her head wildly.
УNoЧnoЧЧlet me go! I. mustЧnot my bloodЧ hers
She sobbed on the last word, and suddenly collapsed in his arms, weeping with a violent intensity that shook her from head to foot. Smith gazed helplessly about over the orange head, then gathered the shaking girl in his arms and went on up the steps through the violent gloaming.
He must have climbed for all of five minutes before the twilight thinned a little and he saw that the stairs ended at the head of a long hallway;liigh-arched like a cathedral aile. A row of low doors ran down one side of the hail, and he turned aside at random iato tl)e nearest. It gave upon a gallery whose arches opened into blue space. A low bench ran along the wall under the gallery windows, and he crossed it, gently setting down the sobbing girl and supporting her against his shoulder.
УMy sister,Ф she wept. УIt has herЧoh, my sister!Ф
УDonТt cry, donТt cry,Ф Smith heard his own voice saying, surprisingly. УItТs all a dream, you know. DonТt cryЧ there never was any sisterЧyou donТt exist at allЧdonТt cry so.Ф
She jerked her head up at that, startled out of her sobs for a moment, and~stared at him with sherry-brown eyes drowned in tears. Her lashes clung together in wet, starry points. She
stared with searching eyes, taking lр the-leather-brownness of him, his spacemanТs suit, his scaried dark face and eyes paler than steel. And then a look of infinite pity softened the strangeness of her face, and she said gently.
УOh. . . you come fromЧfromЧЧyou still believe that you dream!Ф
УI know IТm dreaming,Ф persisted Smith childishly. УIТm lying asleep in Lakkdarol and dreaming of you, and all this, and when I wakeЧФ
She shook her head sadly.
УYou will never wake. You have come into a more deadly dream than you could ever guess. There is no waking from this land.Ф