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

The little image showed Willow, sitting on a plastic couch squeezed between two Wackerhut policewomen. They had
their arms twined with hers in some special cop way and one of them was in the process of pulsing a drug-mist
squeezie in front of Willow's tiny triangular nose.

"Phil, be sure to call Tre Dietz," said Willow, her features already slackening. "I forgot to tell Jane."

"Don't worry, Willow. I'll be right there."

"Call him!" insisted Willow. "Tell Tre the wowos are real! The bastard." The uvvy clicked off.

"Who's Tre?" Kevvie wanted to know.

"Oh, you've heard of him. He's the uvvy graphics hacker in Santa Cruz who runs that new company Philosophical
Toys? He got interested in Da's work on this weird shape called a Klein bottle — and they did the wowo together. Just
for a goof. Tre's only about thirty. He and Da used to hang together and tweak the wowos." The unreality of it all came
crashing over Phil then and he was crying. "I don't understand, Kevvie. Da can't be dead."

"But who actually owns the rights to the wowo?" asked Kevvie.

"Kevvie, that's too — " Phil broke off and slumped in his chair. This had really taken the wind out of his sails. "Can
you drive, Kevvie? I don't think I can drive. I'm all torn up."

"I'll go dress."

When Kevvie left, Umberto came skulking back out of the doughnut. Phil petted him absently as he uvvied Tre. Tre
was still in bed with his wife Terri, and none too talkative.

"Yaaar?"

"Tre, this is Phil Gottner. One of the wowos just killed my dad. You better turn the rest of them off."

"Myoor! That's so xoxxed! I should have thought of this. Your poor dad. I'll kill the wowos right now. Later."

Phil left a message at the restaurant where he cooked, and then he put on his silver boots and black leather jacket and
went outside with Kevvie. There was a stink like sewage and cheese from the big moldie nest in the abandoned red
ship that sat in a silted-in slip across the street from Phil's warehouse — the Snooks family. A group of skungy
sporeheads and slug-skaters were standing on the pavement by the ship talking to a couple of the Snooks moldies and
buying camote, the sporeheads' drug of choice. Obviously they'd been up all night. Phil gave them the finger, pro
forma. They jeered back; one of them halfheartedly threw a rock. Phil and Kevvie headed out.

It started raining as they got on the road. The traffic was light; the former Silicon Valley of the Peninsula had become
something of a Rust Belt, and there wasn't much reason for anyone to go down there from San Francisco. There were
only a handful of cars on the road, all tiny electric jobbies with hydrogen fuel cells. Overhead you could see a few of
the richer travelers riding on great flapping moldies.

Kevvie wanted to listen to an old-fashioned morning audio show she liked, a smugly cynical guy and a woman with a
dead flat that's-the-way-it-is-and-nothing-more voice just like Kevvie's. The theme of the show was that flying saucer
aliens had been invading Earth for over a century and that the government was keeping it a secret. As if there were a
government that mattered. As if the actual aliens who'd briefly appeared on the Moon this winter weren't more exciting
than hundred-year-old lies. But Kevvie loved this shit. Phil threw a fit and made her turn it off.