"Wilhelm,_Kate_-_Julian(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

"Some people say you've worked miracles already, getting kids off drugs, straightening out delinquents, things like that," Dolly Kearns said, snapping her pictures.
"Those are miracles only if you believe there is no human potential that can be awakened. People who come to know there is a higher life attainable within their grasp, not in a mysterious hereafter, have no further need for their addictions. They shed them with ease, without pangs or regrets. That is the human potential, and in itself is miraculous. That is not the kind of miracle I will show the world this spring."
"When will this miracle take place?" Eric Mendel asked, not writing now.
"Memorial Day."
* * * *
Julian's book was published in April. One reviewer said it was so simple that any schoolchild could have written it in a single page. Its message was: You are not a machine. Machines were invented to serve humanity. Human potential is as yet unimaginable because no one has demonstrably reached an upper limit. Human beings are so narcotized, sedated, polluted, conditioned, and lied to that only an outside force can shock them into wakefulness and awareness. And so on.
"He promises nothing," the reviewer complained, "and yet he has followers, people who must want to hear how foul life is, and that it can be better, because that is all that is in his book."
"In less than a year," another critic said, this time a psychologist, "Julian appeared out of nowhere with a message that has been stated repeatedly by scores of others, and yet he has found disciples. It is the mysterious rite of baptism that he employs that is irresistible," the psychologist went on. "Those people who flock to him do not want reason and logic, they want and need mysteries, and Julian is providing them."
Julian read all the reviews, the letters to editors complaining about his blasphemous usurpation of the Christian rites, the psychological analyses of his meteoric rise. When his followers urged him to reply to his critics, he shook his head, smiling.
"One cannot respond with reason when it is the unreason of belief and faith that is questioned. Only those who experience the purification can understand its meaning. To all others it must remain illogical, a blasphemy, paganism revived, whatever they choose to call it."
The article that Eric Mendel had written was published early in May. Julian read: "It is his absolute belief in his own words that turns an audience of skeptics into a roomful of people who are shaken in their own beliefs, people who wonder why they have held to beliefs that suddenly seem so childish and even harmful. When Julian talks about the water cycle, how the rain cleanses as it falls, cleaning the air, then the land and the rivers, only to return to the ocean where the process starts again, one realizes that this is important. It is an elementary school lesson repeated by this remarkable man, and somehow it takes on a significance that was missing before. He tells his audience that the ancients knew about the powers of water to heal, to cleanse the body and the spirit, and they go away believing, or longing to believe so fiercely that they are drawn back again and again. Those who undergo the purification rite are changed, and whether it is subjective only matters little because the change they experience influences their lives..."
Julian put the magazine down and stared at the little fountain that never was turned off. A year, he thought, it had taken only a year to come to this. For three days and nights he had sat by a swimming pool studying the water in sunlight, under artificial lights, by starlight, the water churned by dozens of bodies, when it lay unmarred by a ripple, cratered by raindrops... And it had come to him whole and complete, everything had appeared, nothing had been omitted, no detail that he later had to improvise. He felt that he had opened a gate that day and from then on had simply followed the path he had found. He seldom had to think about what he would say or do under any circumstances; the words came, the acts flowed of their own accord.
Kim and John entered the room and waited. He gazed at the fountain another few seconds, then went to his favorite cushion and sat down, motioning for them to seat themselves also.
"You have the hall rented?"
Kim nodded. He was Julian's age, not yet twenty-five; he had been the first disciple, and was still the one Julian turned to first.
"And the necessary stage is being prepared, the pool, everything?" Julian knew it was all going according to plan; the questions were ritualistic, they all accepted that. Kim and John were here for special instructions.
"You have rented the house for my meditations and seclusion?"
Again Kim nodded.
Without further questioning Julian told them what they were to do. Neither objected or asked for reasons. They listened attentively, and when he was finished he embraced them and they left. He returned to the fountain. After a moment he dipped his hands in the water and watched it run down the sides of his hands, down his fingers, off his finger tips.
* * * *
"Who are you?" Stella Johnson demanded. She was about forty, he thought, with a hard voice, but frightened eyes.
"Julian. I have known you for twelve years, Stella Johnson. You destroyed my life."
She took a backward step, staring at him. "You're crazy. I've never seen you before."
"But I saw you." Julian turned the key in the lock and put the key inside his pocket.
"Why did you have them bring me here? My friends will call the police. You can't simply kidnap a person and get away with it." They were all the right words, but there was no conviction behind them. When he did not reply, she whispered, "What are you going to do to me?"
"Nothing. Keep you here for three days and then take you to a gathering where I am to speak. Nothing more than that, unless you desire it."
She was watching him fixedly. Now she sank down into a chair. "Why? It doesn't make any sense. Why me?"
Julian smiled at her. "We both know how to make you reveal that you are not human."
"You don't know anything about me," she said. "You can't."
He nodded. "There will be time. Perhaps you will tell me."
"I might kill you," she said desperately.
"I thought of that. My friends are outside in the camper they brought you in. They will take turns watching, and if you emerge they will catch you and take you to the police and charge you with murder. It might not stick, you might claim self-defense and get off, but during the interrogations, the days and nights under constant surveillance, I'm afraid your secret would be revealed."
She leaned back and closed her eyes.
Julian sat down with a book and started to read.
The second day she begged him to permit her to bathe, and he gave her a wash basin of warm water and watched as the water vanished. She looked nearer fifty than forty. He gave her fruit and vegetables to eat, and a glass of water late in the afternoon. She looked like a fifty-five-to-sixty-year-old woman.
Once she tried to attack him with a pan from the kitchen, but he overpowered her easily and took the pan from her. She was frail and weak.
"You'll kill me!" she cried. "Is that what you want, to kill me? I haven't done anything to you. I haven't harmed anyone."
"You destroyed my life," he said again. "For twelve years I've lived with a nightmare. You, or others like you, permeate our history. The witch hunters knew about you, didn't they? They tried to find you by dunking suspects into water. The test was not who drowned, but who came out young and beautiful. How long have you been here? How many of you are there? Why are you here?"
She sat down again and closed her eyes. That night she told him she was dying. She looked like a mummy. She was too weak to rise from the bed. Her hair was thin and lank, her arms withered, her face sunken in. Julian brought the basin and bathed her, then again, and still again.
"It is not enough!" she moaned. "Please, permit me to bathe."
"No! I will bring you water, all that you can have. It ends tomorrow night. For one more day I'll watch over you, keep you alive and well enough."
"And then?"
"It depends on you."
"I won't cooperate in any way!"
"But you will. Willingly or not, you will cooperate."
She turned away from him, forty again, or fifty.
"The Egyptians knew about you, didn't they? They knew mummies could be revived with water, brought back to glorious youth. In their worship of Isis, they ritualistically submerged celebrants, didn't they?"
She did not answer.
In the morning he gave her oranges and apples, but no water. At noon he offered her more fruit, and again late in the afternoon. Throughout the day while she aged minute by minute, she advanced by years.
"I will scream that you are forcing me, that you kidnapped me and starved me," she whispered hoarsely. "They won't let you half-drown a helpless old woman."