"Baker, Kage - The Dust Enclosed Here" - читать интересную книгу автора (Baker Kage)

"Okay," agreed the man.

He was programmed to give them the one catalogued as the Eighteenth, and for once he didn't feel like substituting another.

"Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" he declaimed. "Thou art more lovely and more temperate..." He gave the rest in a performance so widely gestured and so antic even Will Kempe would have winced at it for being over the top, but it held their attention at least.

"That was neat," volunteered the man, when the recitation had ended.

"Many thanks. That sonnet, with selected others, is available in the Gifte Shoppe off the lobby, in both ring holo and standard format," he informed them. Caitlin nodded approvingly. The commercials must not be omitted, and that was one of the few things on which he agreed with his owners.

"Does the Gifte Shoppe sell Fruit Chew bars too?" inquired one of the ladies.

"Yea, madam, it doth," he told her, and she turned to her companions.

"I'm starving. Do you want to ... ?"

"Yeah," the others chorused, nodding, and they turned away and made for the exit. Courtesy wasn't entirely dead in this latest age, however; at the door the man turned back and waved.

"Thanks, and -- um ... Goodbyeth thee!"

Will smiled and waved back. "Now God blight thy knave's stones with poxy sores, most noble sir," he murmured sotto voce, noting with relief that it was six o'clock. The Southwark Museum was about to close for the day.

"Our revels now are ended!" he shouted, as the big clock struck across the river.

"Mr. Shakespeare," said Caitlin hesitantly, "You're supposed to follow the script. You know they really do want you to make those jokes about your hair. People like to laugh."

"Then let 'em drag Dicky Tarleton from his grave, and set him in this bear pit," snarled Will. "There was a man of elegant jest, God He knows. Or let in a little mongrel dog to piss my leg, what sayest thou? They'll laugh right heartily then."

"We don't have dogs anymore," Caitlin explained. "Not since -- "

"Since Beast Liberation, ay, I know it well. Nor canst thou give them Jack Falstaff for merriment, since he is banished, with all the other children of mine invention." Will collapsed into a sitting position on the stage, staring up at the empty galleries of the Globe Restored.

"I'm really sorry about that, Mr. Shakespeare, but I explained to you about the List," said Caitlin, referring to the database of proscribed and immoral literature published annually by the Tri-Worlds Council for Integrity.

"Even so you did," Will admitted. "And rather I had rotted in the earth this many a year than fret away eternity in such a dull, spiteful and Puritan age. What though my plays won't please? I take no censorship ill; there was ever a Master of the Revels spying over my shoulder lest I write an offense. But if they would let me give them a new piece, why, then! There's fine dramatic matter in these new times. That men might seek their fortunes not in mere Virginia colonies, but on Mars -- God's bones, what a wonder! Or a play of the Mountains of the Moon, what say you?" He swung his sharp stare down to her eyes.

"I wish you could," said Caitlin miserably, looking away from his gaze. She had gotten this job in the first place because she had a degree in history and longed, with all her unwise heart, to have been born in the romantic past. "I don't make the policy, Mr. Shakespeare. I'm sorry all your plays were condemned. If it wasn't for the tourist income the Borough Council wouldn't even let you do your songs and sonnets."

" 'The Revenge of Kate,' " Will said slyly, framing a playbill in the air with his hands. "Wherein Petruchio himself is tamed, how like you that? That'll please, surely, and how if there were a mild Jew and a meek harmless Moor to boot? Nor no lusts nor bawdiness, nor any cakes nor ale, nor battles, and they shall ride no horses, out of melting compassion for the poor jades. Nay, more! There shall be a part set to be signed in dumb-show for the, what's the new word? Ay, the hearing-impaired!"

"I wish you could," Caitlin repeated, and he saw that she was near tears, and sighed.

"Go thy ways, girl," he said. "Grant me oblivion."

He stuck out his arms theatrically, as though being pinioned to a rack, and held the pose as she flicked the switch that shut him off for the night. Without illumination the dust motes vanished, settled.



So accustomed had he grown to this routine, over the five years he had been an exhibit in the museum, that he nearly died a second time when he found himself unexpectedly on in the middle of the night. He leaped to his feet and stared around him in the dark.