"Spider Robinson - Post Toast" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Spider)

POST TOAST
by
SPIDER ROBINSON
Jake Stonebender, proprietor of Mary's Place (spiritual successor to Callahan's Place), has been
making music with Zoey and Fast Eddie for over an hour, and his fingers are shot. "Tom," he calls out to
the man behind the stick, "Bring me a double!"
Tom Hauptman grins. "Sure thing, Boss," he says. Then, oddly, he turns on his heel and leaves the
room, walks through the bead curtain into the back тАУ into Jake and Zoey's living quarters. Jake stares
after him in puzzlement.
A moment later Tom emerges with a companion. Tall, unreasonably thin, long of hair and reasonably
sanitary of beard, thick glasses, Beatle boots, otherwise clad in an odd mixture of L.L. Bean and The
Gap, with long fingers, a splendid guitar around his neck and a vaguely alarming gleam in his eye. He is,
in short, a reasonable facsimile of Jake.
"You DID ask for a double," Tom says, straightfaced, and the bar bursts into thunderous laughter
and applause.
"Spider Robinson!" Jake cries. "By da t'underin' Jesus, it's good to see you, mate!"
"Right back at you, bro," says Spider. "Hi Zoey. Hi, Eddy -- Doc -- Drink -- everybody..."
There is a merry rumble of welcome. "What brings you back to Long Island, pal?" Long-Drink
McGonnigle calls out. "If you don't mind my asking," he adds hastily, as Fast Eddie stirs on his piano
stool.
"I came to give you all a speech, and a toast, and a song," Spider says solemnly, and a respectful
silence falls. Tom Hauptman is already pouring the Bushmills 1608. Spider takes it, walks around the
bar and strides up to the chalk line on the floor, faces the crackling hearth. He holds up his shot and
looks through it at the fire for a long moment, seems lost in thought. Then he lowers it, untasted, and
turns to the assembled witnesses.
"As most of you know," he says, "I come from what Admiral Bob calls a different 'ficton' -- a
different dimension, a different reality -- than this one. My reality is adjacent to and congruent to and
very similar to yours, but different. For example, in the 1996 that I come from, the Beatles just put out
two new singles."
(rumbles of astonishment and profound envy from all sides)
"With help from Mike Callahan, I visit this ficton once every few years, and get Jake there stoned,
and transmute what he tells me about you into stories that I publish as science fiction back in my own
ficton. I get to support a family without owning a necktie, and Jake gets the free reefer and someone to
listen to him talk: like breastfeeding, the relationship is mutually satisfactory, so much that it has endured
for two dozen years.
"So in my ficton, there are a lot of people who have the preposterous idea that I INVENTED all of
you, that you are all just figments and figwoments of my imagination. To be honest, I haven't done much
to dissuade them -- because anybody who could think up people like YOU rummies would have to be
one hell of a story-teller."
(sounds of raucous agreement from the patrons)
"Well, I recently learned that, to humble me, God created yet another ficton, which is adjacent and
congruent and similar to my own, yet different -- called USENET -- and in THAT ficton, some people
seem to have the idea that Spider Robinson is a fictional character THEY invented. They're apparently
engaged in rewriting me as I speak, patting me into shape. I only recently got the word: some of them
hipped me, and kept it up 'till I finally heard them.
"I'm not complaining: it serves me right. Talk about poetic justice! And they're not even doing a bad
job, so far, if you ask me: they actually make me sound pretty interesting. Did you know, for instance,
that Robert Heinlein once saved my life? I hadn't...
"But I didn't come here to boast. I came here to tell you all that the seed you used me to plant in my
ficton has metastasized...to another.