"Duane, Diane - Tos - Spock's World" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duane Diane)

up, r he caught the tail end of a wave from
Riona and Erevan Fitzharris, passing by on their
way to the bar for their nightly pint: a tall blond
man, a tall redheaded lady, computer consultants
who commuted home to Wick
low from Hamburg every day. They had been the first
ones to realize who Jim was.
j Ronan hadn't even thought about it, he
claimed, till he was told. "It's not my
fault," he said later: "Kirks are common as
cowpats around here, for pity's sake. Also I
don't watch that damn box," that being how he
referred to the holovision, except of course j when
it was showing soccer. But Jim had his suspi
cions-Ronaa had taken an image of his
direct-credit plate, after all. It was not until
Riona and Erevan accused him in public,
one night, of being in StarHeet, of being, in fact,
the James T. Kirk, that he admitted it
to anyone. And to his astonishment, after the laugh 15
ing, hollering group in the pub that night had been
told the secret, and howled with merriment to see aim
blush (it had to have been the whiskey they kept feeding
him), they all pretended it hadn't happened.
Only once in a while, if out of habit he had
activated his universal-translator implant that
morning, he would hear one of the Irish-speaking
regulars murmur to someone new about ar captaen an
t-arthaigh an rhealtai Eachtra: our starship
captain, the one with the Enterprise. And he would turn
away, so as not to let them see him smiling.
Jim sipped at the whiskey, and stretched a bit
in the chair. The people here were mostly interested in who he
was, and only occasionally in what he didthat was
what made the place so marvelous. They had been
piqued by not being told what he did, but once that was
settled and he had been properly ragged for being a
galactic hero, there were other more important things
to talk about: weather, farming, sport, and especially
local gossip, which most everyone took covert or
overt delight in sharing with him. The regulars seemed
to think it a point of honor that he should know
their neighbors, and themselves, as well as they did.
Jim, not to put too fine a point on it, ate it
up. There was, after all, a resemblance to part of his
job as a starship captain. It was his business to be
very familiar indeed with the gossip of what amounted to a
small spacefaring village----to know where to share it,
and when to spread it, and how to keep quiet and smile.
And if of an evening someone did tempt him