"Jack Vance - Green Magic" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

this understanding, two hours had elapsed since Howard Fair had followed the green sprites from the
bar.

Howard Fair had perceived other criteria. For him the interval had been seven hundred years, during
which he had lived in the green realm, learning to the utmost capacity of his brain.

He had occupied two years training his senses to the new conditions. Gradually he learned to walk in the
six basic three-dimensional directions, and accustomed himself to the fourth-dimensional short-cuts. By
easy stages the blinds over his eyes were removed, so that the dazzling over-human intricacy of the
landscape never completely confounded him.

Another year was spent training him to the use of a code language--an intermediate step between the
vocalizations of Earth and the meaning patterns of the green realm, where a hundred symbol-flakes
(each a flitting spot of delicate iridescence) might be displayed in a single swirl of import. During this
time Howard Fair's eyes and brain were altered, to allow him the use of the many new colors, without
which the meaning-flakes could not be recognized.

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 Green Magic



These were preliminary steps. For forty years he studied the flakes, of which there were almost a
million. Another forty years was given to elementary permutations and shifts, and another forty to
parallels, attenuation, diminishments and extensions; and during this time he was introduced to flake
patterns, and certain of the more obvious displays.

Now he was able to study without recourse to the code language, and his progress became more marked.
Another twenty years found him able to recognize more complicated Meanings, and he was introduced
to a more varied program. He floated over the field of moth-wing mosaics, which still showed the
footprints of the golem. He sweated in embarrassment, the extent of his wicked willfulness now clear to
him.

So passed the years. Howard Fair learned as much green magic as his brain could encompass.

He explored much of the green realm, finding so much beauty that he feared his brain might burst. He
tasted, he heard, he felt, he sensed, and each one of his senses was a hundred times more discriminating
than before. Nourishment came in a thousand different forms: from pink eggs which burst into a hot
sweet gas, suffusing his entire body; from passing through a rain of stinging metal crystals; from simple
contemplation of the proper symbol.

Homesickness for Earth waxed and waned. Sometimes it was insupportable and he was ready to forsake
all he had learned and abandon his hopes for the future. At other times the magnificence of the green
realm permeated him, and the thought of departure seemed like the threat of death itself.

By stages so gradual he never realized them he learned green magic.

But the new faculty gave him no pride: between his crude ineptitudes and the poetic elegance of the
sprites remained a tremendous gap, and he felt his innate inferiority much more keenly than he ever had
in his old state. Worse, his most earnest efforts failed to improve his technique, and sometimes,