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

 Spider nods. "Good question. I reached into a pile of their traffic at random and pulled out a
message. Someone I didn't know was talking to someone else I didn't know, who was in the end stage
of leukemia. He said, 'You are about to go on a wonderful journey through space and time with Mike
Callahan and the gang.' He said, 'I envy you the trip.' He said, 'Save me a seat by the hearth, my
friend...' He...I...it was..." Spider falls silent. His jaw muscles ripple, and he pokes around behind his
glasses with a knuckle. "Five deaths, so far," he manages. "And some births... and God knows how
many weddings..." He shakes his head. "And some of the WORST goddam jokes I ever..."
"Hully fuckin Jesus Christ, WE DONE IT!" Fast Eddie cries.
"We broke the membrane," Suzy Maser murmurs, thunderstruck.
"Through the Looking Glass..." her co-wife Suzi breathes.
"Spider's right," Doc Webster rumbles. "We've metastasized."
"We're loose among the fictons," Long-Drink McGonnigle says with most uncharacteristic sobriety.
"We're fucking literally out of this world!"
"All that pain diminishing," Zoey says softly.
"All dat joy increasin," Fast Eddie adds just as softly.
Jake, with the air of someone quoting scripture, says, "'God,' he cries, dying on Mars, 'we made
it!'..." and everyone in the room (recognizing the tagline of a Theodore Sturgeon story famous in nearly
every ficton) nods.
Suddenly a spontaneous ovation occurs, a consensual roar of joy and glee and hope and pride that
rocks the rafters, shakes the walls, rattles the glasses behind the bar and makes a cloud of sawdust rise
from the floor. People fall on each other and hug and laugh and sob and pound each other's back and
pour beer over one another.
Jake and Tom were off the mark the instant it began, from sheer instinct, and barely in time: as the
blizzard of empty glasses begins to fall on the fireplace, they are busy passing out full ones.
Which reminds everybody that Spider said he has a toast to make. Which reminds them that maybe
Spider has more on his mind than just making them feel good. Slowly, hesitantly, the noise dwindles, until
the room is more or less silent again.
"So," Zoey says, "how do YOU feel about all this, Spider? If you don't mind my asking?"
"Well," Spider says slowly, "I came here tonight because I didn't know the answer to that myself. I
figured one of you would probably ask me sooner or later, and I know I can't lie to one of you, so I
expected to get my answer here...and I have. The answer is, it beats the living shit out of me."
"What do you THINK of the joint?" Long-Drink asks.
"Dunno, Drink. I've never been there in my life."
"Jump back!" the Drink says. "Why not?"
"Well, basically, you need a good Ficton-Twister to get there. A Ficton-Twister is a highly evolved
descendant of the typewriter, and the one I own after twenty-three years of writing science fiction for a
living just isn't powerful enough to pierce the membrane, as the Doc puts it. I couldn't get to USENET if
I walked all day. The data I was given about alt.callahans amount to a time-lapse film of a couple of
years that takes half an hour to watch: you can't evaluate a place on evidence like that."
"But what's your first impression?" Zoey prods. "How does it make you FEEL?"
Spider is slow to answer. Slowly it dawns on those present that for the first time in memory, Spider
Robinson is having difficulty finding the right words.
"I feel," he says finally, "like a man who's just learned that he has a grown son he never knew existed,
by a lady long-forgotten...no, a whole HERD of grown children, with grown grandchildren with kids of
their own. He can't claim the privileges of paternity, because he only meant to entertain the lady, and he
wasn't there when the diapers were full, or the tuition was due -- but nonetheless he feels warm and
proud, whether he has any real right to or not."
Jake and Zoey exchange a glance. "I...put it this way: I feel less useless than usual, lately."
"Does it bother you that some of them don't seem to know you from Adam's off ox -- or care?"
Merry Moore asks.