"Rudy Rucker - Realware" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

"Thanks, Phil. It's nice to meet you. Let's talk some more in a minute."

Phil watched Yoke go up the stairs. She had a high, perfectly rounded butt. But she moved up the stairs very slowly,
taking one step at a time. It was so painful to watch that Phil looked away for a minute. When he looked back, Yoke
was at the top. She smiled and waved as if she'd just mounted some great peak.

"Oh there you are." It was Kevvie, chewing a stick of celery. "Why'd you run off in the middle of the service?"

"It was getting to be too much for me." Phil glanced up the stairs. No more Yoke. He sort of didn't want her to see him
with Kevvie. "Let's go out on the porch."

"Aren't you supposed to be doing something about your father's ashes?"

"Oh God, I forgot."

Phil hurried back down the steps to where his family stood around the rug on the ground. The reddish madrone wood
of the eight-sided box made Phil think of a stop sign. Da's ashes.

Angular little sister Jane hugged Phil. Willow gave him a brittle smile. Eve, Isolde, and great-aunt Hildegarde each gave
him a kiss. Rex shook his hand and clapped his shoulder, Aunt Zsuzsi patted his cheek, cousins Gina and Mary smiled
sadly.

Kurt had often said he wanted them to dig his ashes into the soil under a certain big oak tree in a park near Palo Alto,
he and the kids had strolled there together many times. The tree was split near its base into a pair of great twin trunks.
Phil had been placed in charge of informally sneaking the ashes into the public land, so now he put the flat little box in
his coat pocket. Eve had forced him to buy a suit for the funeral; it was the first time in his life Phil had ever worn one.

They stood around for a bit, sadly reminiscing. Jane recalled how Kurt had always rhapsodized about the oak tree,
how he'd gone on about fractals and gnarliness and self-organized criticality.

"I remember another thing Da used to say about that tree," said Phil. "He talked about how the week before the
psychologist C. G. Jung died, Jung had a dream about an oak tree blown over in a storm with great nuggets of gold
found twined in its roots. 'I want to be remembered like that,' Da always said. 'That my life sent down deep roots that
pulled up gold.' " Phil sighed heavily. "I don't know if he really made it."

"Of course he did," said Isolde. "Think of his students."

"And who knows what the wowo will lead to," said Rex. "Don't underestimate your old dad, Phil. He was a pisser, but
he was deep."

"Your father loved you very much, Phil," said Willow reproachfully.

"When he wasn't too drunk," muttered Phil.

"What?"

"Never mind."

"Speaking of wowos, look at this," said Jane, hurriedly getting something out of her purse. "Willow gave this to me."