We Haven't Got There Yet Read online

  “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

  Prince of the North

  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

  Second Contact

  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

  The Big Switch

  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