"David Brin - A Stage of Memory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brin David)

them with a few words. "Derek," he urged. "You used to say there was nothing more
contemptible than the artist who lost himself on the Edge. Now you are sacrificing
everything on the altar of Bacchus. 'Tis mad idolatry to make the service greater than
the god!"
 In the half-drunken fog, Derek's belligerent side won a brief, but bitter, struggle.
" Cry, Troyans, Cry!' " He mocked the older man, quoting from the same play.
"Cassandra, you can go to hell." He stood up and walked unsteadily to the door. On
the way he kicked Peter's chair. His fists clenched in pleasure at the resultant shout
and crash, and he left without looking back.
Later he had the satisfaction of punching Todd Chestner in his fatuous, earnest
young face. It would take makeup an extra half hour to get the twerp ready, during
the first week of the road show. That was some satisfaction, at least.
After that, though, even the groupies drew back. And that evening he went home
alone.


"Uh!"
Derek awakened suddenly from the drug-induced playback. He shuddered, and
for a long time just lay there on the unkempt mattress, breathing.
The new drug certainly did release a charged, totally vivid experience. It also drew
out the playbacks more rapidly.
All he had to do was somehow endure the next three years' worth of memory
recall. That's all. At this rate it shouldn't take more than a couple of weeks, real time.
A few more weeks, then, if Bettide was right, it would be back to the golden years!
Derek had come to believe the drug did more than simply play back chemical
memories inscribed in the brain. He was half convinced it actually took one back.
Personally. And when the bad times were through he would be free once more to
cycle back to childhood... to model airplanes and long summer afternoons... to ice
cream and the sweetness of precocious first love... to a time when there were no
regrets.
He got up, stretching to ease a crick in his back, and slipped a Diet-Perf dinner
into the rusty old microwave. He barely tasted the meal when he spooned it down.
Derek got out the log Dr. Bettide had given him. Success depended on the
physician's goodwill, so he wrote down the times and places he had returned to...
avoiding mention of the nasty little personal details. They were irrelevant, anyway.
He watched the Late Show on TV until, at last, sleep arrived. Then came the
inevitable struggle with his dreams, trying to make them conform to his will. But they
were not pliant, and had their way with him.


"Blakeney, just who do you think you are? This is the third time you've come in
late and stoned, and gotten belligerent with the audience! We may be a small-time
company, but we've got our reputations to consider..."
"Reputations!" Derek sniffed noisily. He had been doing a lot of coke lately and
his sinuses stung. That only made him angrier. "Reputations, my eye! You're a
bunch of diapered juveniles pandering to tourists in a little uptown improv club,
calling yourselves actors. Here I am, willing to lend you my name and my services,
and you talk to me about reputations?"
"Why, you conceited windbag!" One of the young men had to be physically
restrained. Derek grinned as the others held the fellow back, knowing they would