"Lavie Tidhar - Revolution Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tidhar Lavie)

I was the only local, but it was Joe who was going to get us in. His degree was in physics and time
theory, and the university’s closeness to the edge of town put it in close proximity to the Chrono
Institute’s underground research base. One day Joe got lost in the university’s basement – quite why we
never found out – when he happened on a disused corridor. It was dark, he said, and his steps left
imprints in the fine layer of dust lying on the floor. He was about to turn around when he thought he heard
voices, coming from farther down the corridor. They were indistinguishable, he said, like a far-away
murmur. He decided to investigate.

At the end of the corridor was an air-vent. There was no air coming through, and the blades have
stopped rotating a long time ago. Joe peered through them, catching the sight of moving shadows and the
echo of footsteps.

“I don’t see why you necessarily think it leads to the Chrono area,” Monty said, playing devil’s advocate.
It was a month earlier, at the usual place: The Trotsky, a damp, dark watering hole in a run-down part of
town which, rumour had it, was once visited by the man himself, in his own dark, yet colourful, past.

“Where else would it lead, man?” Morgan sparked up a joint and stared at him across the table. The
smoke framed her face like the shape of a heart. “I wouldn’t be here –” she waved her finger at him,
“and you wouldn’t be here, if it wasn’t something both of our respective organisations thought was worth
pursuing.”

I smiled, admiring her strength and her energy. Monty scowled. “Take that puppy-dog-in-love look off
your face. It’s embarrassing. And you,” he said, addressing Morgan, “should know better than to get
your hopes up. After all, as the saying goes, they only ever bring back Shakespeare.”

Morgan nodded, maintaining her stare. “Still, enough to bring you down from the Belt to some hellhole in
the middle of the United States.”

“Hey,” I said. They ignored me.

“True,” Monty finally conceded, spreading his hands on the table. “I’d rather be up at the kibbutz, taking
on those sons of bitches from the mining corporations. And most likely this is nothing. But if it can
work...” his face lost its intensity for a moment. “If we can bring him back, we can have a real chance at
a revolution.”




“Why do they always bring back Shakespeare?”

I asked my grandfather that once, on a day the papers were full of yet another of the bard’s brief visits to
the twenty-first.

Granddad shook his head. “He’s famous,” he said, “in a non-confrontational way. Sure, the playwrights
protested at first, and there was the worry about grad students trying to do all kinds of horrible things to
him –” I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not as he said it – “but everyone likes Shakespeare, in a vague
sort of way.” He shook his head again, and his eyes, when he looked at me were still like those of a
child, clear-blue and wide. “If only we could bring back someone who could make a difference,” he said.
“Someone who could help.”