"Rudy Rucker - Realware" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)"The thing that came through the wowo. It couldn't have been the wowo itself that ate poor Kurt—a wowo's just a
hollow of a self-everting Klein bottle geometrized in this tasty gnarly way that Kurt dreamed up. The wowo must have attracted something." Tre gave a kind of shudder and hugged himself, looking around. "It could be inches away from us right now. Watching." He handed the ring back to Jane. "I wouldn't keep this near me if I were you." "You take it, Phil," said Jane, handing it off like a hot potato. "Bury it with Da's ashes. If we need it again we can always dig it up." "Like the goldfish," said Phil, referring to a dead goldfish that he and Jane had buried one winter, only to dig it up every few days to look at the progress of its decay. "It doesn't feel right not to have all of Da to bury," said Jane. "Willow said the ashes are just part of his hand. Maybe the rest of him is in the fourth dimension." Phil put the knotted ring in his pocket next to the box. Some of his father's stories about the fourth dimension were coming back to him. A four-dimensional monster would be able to touch the ring in his pocket without coming through the fabric. Even if he were to put the ring inside the box, a four-dimensional creature could still reach it, just like you can touch the middle of a sheet of paper without coming through the paper's edge. If the four-dimensional creature could see everything, what good would it do to bury the ring? "There was a weird dimensional thing about Darla too," Yoke was telling Jane. "She disappeared on Christmas Eve. My dick of a father had left her alone, he was out with a girlfriend or something. Poor Darla. All Whitey could find of her was this little gory patch of blood. And then Whitey starts saying he's going to grow her back. He has a fairly recent S-cube of her personality, and he's gonna use her DNA to fast-grow a new body, a young sexy one of course. But when he gives some of Darla's blood to a pink-tank worker, about half of the DNA in the blood turns out to be hands. "When I told Tre about it, he said that maybe some of the DNA had been flipped over in the fourth dimension." 'Your father is growing a new copy of your mother?" asked Kevvie. "Clear," said Yoke. "The new Darla's gonna have a bitchin' real meat body, not an imipolex fake like Cobb's. Whitey's had a lot of fights with hoppers and moldies. He wouldn't be able to stand it if Darla came back pure moldie. This way she'll have a meat body, although her personality will have to be off in a kind of moldie scarf that she wears all the time. A Happy Cloak." "I've never heard of anyone doing that before," said Kevvie. "Oh yeah they have," said Yoke. "You've heard of Stahn Mooney. Used to be a Senator? His wife Wendy is made of a meat body with a moldie Happy Cloak that drives the body. Wendy's 'Cloak is really just a moldie that doesn't have any of the original Wendy's personality at all. But we'll have Darla's personality in her 'Cloak to start with." Suddenly the confidence drained out of Yoke's voice. "I hope it works. I miss her." "What are you guys talking about?" asked Willow, wandering up to the group. She had a glass of white wine in her hand and her voice was shrill. "Help yourself to the refreshments before they're all gone. The Bass parents made a very nice buffet. And this wine is from Doctor Peck's own vineyard. It was Kurt's favorite. Eat, drink, and be merry." She looked far from merry. "It was a nice ceremony, Willow," said Tre carefully. "You have a lot of nerve showing up here," said Willow. "Considering that your shitty wowo killed him." |
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