“Good question. If there are no more questions, class dismissed,” says the man who played Rosencrantz.
“Proof is left to the student. That’s what the old geometry books said, right?” adds the fellow who played Guildenstern. Maybe the responses mean something to them. Or maybe they truly are as witstruck by the strange fate that has entrapped them as were the characters they portrayed.
“We were in London,” the young woman says. “And then we were in…London.” She says the same name twice. By the way she says it, the second London—this London—may lie beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, or whatever is farther away than that, from the one she knows.
“When will you return thither?” Shakespeare asks.
The players eye one another. Now they all shrug together. “We don’t know,” says the graybeard who played Claudius. On the stage, he effortlessly ordered Guildenstern and Rosencrantz about. Now he is as much out of his depth as they feigned being.
Which leads Shakespeare to his next question, as inexorably as Hamlet’s disappearance led Guildenstern to open the fatal letter: “Will you return thither?”
They look at one another again. They also look at Shakespeare—as if they hate him. And if they do, who can blame them? Are some questions not better left unfaced? “We don’t know,” the graybeard says once more, in a voice like ashes.
“If we don’t know what happened to us, how are we supposed to know what’s going to happen to us?” The player who performed as Rosencrantz might have lifted his line from the play. He might have, but he hasn’t.
“How will you live whilst here?” Shakespeare comes out with another natural question.
“We’re actors.” Yes, that is the man who played the spokesman. And yes, that is a line from the play. But, Shakespeare realizes, it is also an answer. The man continues, “We’ve got stuff we can do. We won’t starve—any more than actors always starve, I mean.”
“Ah, sadness! woe! that it should be so in your strange London, even as it is here,” Shakespeare says.
“Listen, man, if there are actors in heaven—fat chance, yeah, but like I say, if—they’re starving there, too. Bet your sweet ass they are.” The player who was Guildenstern speaks with complete assurance.
Still so many things to wonder at! Shakespeare scarce knows—knows not—where to begin. The best he can do is, “What is it like in, in your London?”
Yet again, the players look at one another. This time, Shakespeare understands their glances at a glance. Let them tell him, and tell him true, and he will grasp even less than they do of his city.
But then the woman who was Gertrude speaks for the first time. And she too beyond doubt is a woman, not so young and fresh as the company’s Ophelia, but no crone, either. She has teeth marvelously clean and white. Everyone in the company seems to.
“It is full of noises,” she says softly.
Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not.
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices,
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep,
Will make me sleep again.
“Holy crap, Jessica! What a showoff!” the spokesman says.
“Teacher’s pet!” the player who was Guildenstern puts in.
Shakespeare takes no notice of them, but bows to her. He has more of an answer than he thought he would get. And…“Those are not the worst of verses. Whose, if I may make bold to ask?”
Coming up to him, she takes his hands in hers. “Why, they are yours, Master Shakespeare.”
With regret, he shakes his head. “Never sprang they from my pen.”
She leans forward to kiss him gently on the cheek. They are very much of a height. Her breath is sweet—how not, with those perfect teeth? “Never yet,” she whispers, and slips away.
And that, at last, is altogether too much for Shakespeare’s ravished senses. He flees the tiring room, stumbling in his haste to get away. “Cast you forth, did they?” Ned says, rough sympathy in his voice. Shakespeare gives back not a word. Will he write those lines because Gertrude—no, Jessica—gave him them? Would he have written them had he never set eyes on her? Will he not write them now because she gave them, and in the giving somehow spoiled them?
Questions. Always questions. Answers? How do I know? We haven’t got there yet. Christ, how he pities Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!
Can he stay away from the Rose? That question he answers on the morrow: he cannot, and scarcely tries. The lure of the lost company from that other London is too great. Can nails resist a lodestone? Not even if their ship falls to pieces because they fly from it.
When he comes up, the signboard says they are giving something new. He nods to himself. Any company will offer a variety of its wares.
He sets a penny in the moneytaker’s palm and goes in with the groundlings. A fresh curiosity kindles. Who is this Godot, and why is someone waiting for him?
Copyright © 2009 Harry Turtledove
Books by Harry Turtledove
GERIN THE FOX
Were Blood
Werenight
King of the North
Fox and Empire
VIDESSOS
The Misplaced Legion
An Emperor for the Legion
The Legion of Videssos
Swords of the Legion
Videssos Cycle (omnibus)
Bridge of the Separator
KRISPOS
Krispos Rising
Krispos of Videssos
Krispos the Emperor
WORLDWAR
In the Balance
Tilting the Balance
Upsetting the Balance
Striking the Balance
TIME OF TROUBLES
The Stolen Throne
Hammer and Anvil
The Thousand Cities
Videssos Besieged
GREAT WAR
How Few Remain
The American Front
Walk in Hell
Breakthroughs
DARKNESS
Into the Darkness
Darkness Descending
Through the Darkness
Rulers of the Darkness
Jaws of Darkness
Out of the Darkness
COLONISATION
Down to Earth
Aftershocks
WAR BETWEEN THE PROVINCES
Sentry Peak
Marching Through Peachtree
Advance and Retreat
AMERICAN EMPIRE
Blood and Iron
The Center Cannot Hold
The Victorious Opposition
CROSSTIME TRAFFIC
Gunpowder Empire
Curious Notions
In High Places
The Disunited States of America
The Gladiator
The Valley-Westside War
SETTLING ACCOUNTS
Return Engagement
Drive to the East
The Grapple
In At the Death
Pacific War
Days of Infamy
End of the Beginning
Gap
Beyond the Gap
The Breath of God
The Golden Shrine
Atlantis
Opening Atlantis
The United States of Atlantis
Liberating Atlantis
War That Came Early
Hitler's War
West and East
Novels
Agent of Byzantium
Noninterference
A Different Flesh
Kaleidoscope
A World of Difference
Earthgrip
The Guns of the South
The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump
The Two Georges: The Novel of an Alternate America (with Richard Dreyfuss)
Thessalonica
Between the Rivers
Household Gods (with Judith Tarr)
Wisdom of the Fox: The Man Who Wouldn't Be King (As If He Had a Choice)
Tale of the Fox
Ruled Britannia
Conan of Venarium
In the Presence of Mine Enemies
Homeward Bound
Every Inch a King
Fort Pillow
The Man with the Iron Heart
After the Downfall
Give Me Back My Legions!
Collections
Departures
Down in the Bottomlands: And Other Places (with L Sprague de Camp)
Counting Up, Counting Down
Reincarnations
Forty, Counting Down & Twenty-One, Counting Up
Atlantis and Other Places