"Jack Vance - The Sorcerer Pharesm" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vance Jack)

"Insect, epiphyte; mollusc - who knows? It resembled no creature I have yet seen, and its flavour,
even after carefully grilling at the brazier, was not distinctive."
Pharesm floated 7 feet into the air, to turn the full power of his gaze down at Cugel. He spoke in a
low harsh voice: "Describe this creature in detail!"
Wondering at Pharesm's severity, Cugel obeyed. "It was thus and thus as to dimension." He
indicated with his hands. "In colour it was a gelatinous transparency shot with numberless golden specks.
These flickered and pulsed when the creature was disturbed. The tentacles seemed to grow flimsy and
disappear rather than terminate. The creature evinced a certain sullen determination, and ingestion proved
difficult."
Pharesm clutched at his head, hooking his fingers into the yellow down of his hair. He rolled his eyes
upwards and uttered a tragic cry. "Ah! Five hundred years I have toiled to entice this creature,
despairing, doubting, brooding by night, yet never abandoning hope that my calculations were accurate
and my great talisman cogent. Then, when finally it appears, you fall upon it for no other reason then to
sate your repulsive gluttony!"
Cugel, somewhat daunted by Pharesm's wrath, asserted his absence of malicious intent. Pharesm
would not be mollified. He pointed out that Cugel had committed trespass and hence had forfeited the
option of pleading innocence. "Your very existence is a mischief compounded by bringing the unpleasant
fact to my notice. Benevolence prompted me to forbearance, which now I perceive for a grave mistake."
"In this case," stated Cugel with dignity, "I will depart your presence at once. I wish you good
fortune for the balance of the day, and now, farewell."
"Not so fast," said Pharesm in the coldest of voices. "Exactitude has been disturbed; the wrong
which has been committed demands a counteract to validate the Law of Equipoise. I can define the
gravity of your act in this manner: should I explode you on this instant into the most minute of your parts
the atonement would measure one ten-millionth of your offence. A more stringent retribution becomes
necessary."
Cugel spoke in great distress. "I understand that an act of consequence was performed, but
remember! my participation was basically casual. I categorically declare first my absolute innocence,
second my lack of criminal intent, and third my effusive apologies. And now, since I have many leagues
to travel, I willтАФ"
Pharesm made a peremptory gesture. Cugel fell silent. Pharesm drew a deep breath. "You fail to
understand the calamity you have visited upon me. I will explain, so that you may not be astounded by
the rigours which await you. As I have adumbrated, the arrival of the creature was the culmination of my
great effort. I determined its nature through a perusal of 42,000 librams, all written in cryptic language: a
task requiring a hundred years. During a second hundred years I evolved a pattern to draw it in upon
itself and prepared exact specification. Next I assembled stone-cutters, and across a period of 300 years
gave solid form to my pattern. Since like subsumes like, the variates and intercongeles create a
suprapullulation of all areas, qualities and internals into a crystorrhoid whorl, eventually exciting the
ponentiation of a proubietal chute. Today occurred the concatenation; the 'creature', as you call it,
pervolved upon itself; in your idiotic malice you devoured it."
Cugel, with a trace of haughtiness, pointed out that the "idiotic malice" to which the distraught
sorcerer referred was in actuality simple hunger. "In any event, what is so extraordinary about the
'creature'? Others equally ugly may be found in the net of any fisherman."
Pharesm drew himself to his full height, glared down at Cugel. "The 'creature'," he said in a grating
voice, 'is TOTALITY. The central globe is all of space, viewed from the inverse. The tubes are vortices
into various eras, and what terrible acts you have accomplished with your prodding and poking, your
boiling and chewing, are impossible to imagine!"
"What of the effects of digestion?" enquired Cugel delicately. "Will the various components of
space, time and existence retain their identity after passing the length of my inner tract?"
"Bah. The concept is jejune. Enough to say that you have wreaked damage and created a serious
tension in the ontological fabric. Inexorably you are required to restore equilibrium."