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

"Yoke's been walking around the Santa Cruz Boardwalk absorbing Earth culture," said Terri. "She and I made friends
when I was up on the Moon, so I invited her to stay with us when she came down." Terri was a trim, deeply tanned
woman with straight dark hair and pink lipstick. Bright golden DIM beads crawled slowly about in her hair.

"Terri's teaching me about diving," said Yoke. "I love being underwater. Everything alive all around you. I want to go
to the South Pacific pretty soon. Earth is wonderful. And not just the water. The sky!" She gestured upward. A low
gauzy cloud was drifting against a background of distant high clouds that rose up like mountain ranges to a tender
patch of blue. "How can you mudders ever get anything done? Whenever I look at the sky I forget all about whatever
I've been doing. Such stuzzy soft fractals." But now her attention returned to Phil. "What kind of job do you have?"

"Non tech. I'm a cook at a three-star San Francisco restaurant named LoLo. My father was disappointed in me. But I'm
good at what I do."

"We hardly have any restaurants on the Moon. Most people just eat food-paste from the tap. And raw fruits and
veggies from week trees."

"Well then, Yoke, our food's another mudder thing you can enjoy learning about. I'd love to cook some special dishes
for—"

"Hi, I'm Kevvie Inch," interrupted Kevvie, suddenly appearing between Phil and Yoke. "Phil and I live together. Who
are you?"

"I'm Yoke Starr-Mydol. I'm from the Moon."

"What are you doing down here?"

"Oh, tourism, self-improvement. I'm interested in the ocean."

"You don't work?"

"Well, nobody's paying me," said Yoke. "I'm kind of a software artist. I like to think of algorithms for simulating natural
processes. I plan to try and model some Earth things while I'm here."

"I'm a geezer-visitor," said Kevvie. "I go see old people all over San Francisco. They have little DIM machines to take
care of them, but they don't have anyone to talk to them. It's sort of like being a sex-worker, except there's no sex. I
have a girlfriend who's a sex-worker. Klara Bio. She and I had bacteria-style sex a few weeks back. Have you ever tried
bacteria-style sex, Yoke?"

Phil groaned inwardly. This was a new obsession of Kevvie's and she was always talking about it. "Bacteria-style sex"
was the current expression for getting in a tub with someone and taking the drug merge to make your bodies
temporarily melt together. Phil refused to do it, because he figured that just one pleasure rush could blow him off the
Straight Edge and down into the addict's 24-7-365 regimen, wasted twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, 365
days a year. Kevvie had started out Straight Edge like Phil, but she'd started dipping and dabbing six months ago, and
now she was getting worse all the time.

"I wouldn't want to," Yoke was saying matter-of-factly. "I think it's skanky. My parents have been merge addicts since
before I was born. Or were. My mother Darla died two months ago. That's something I wanted to talk to you about
some more, Phil. The thing that killed Darla could have been the same thing that killed your dad. And maybe Tempest
Plenty too."