"Rudy Rucker - The Man Who Ate Himself" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

Evangeline walked in among the plants and tossed Marston a ripe tomato. He caught it and bit in thirstily,
the juice runing down his knobby old chin.

"Why don't you just let Eva bury you in the garden?" Harry suggested with deliberate cruelty. "I'm sure
you'd make good fertilizer."
A pulsing snake of a vein sprang into relief on Marston forehead. "That is just, " he wheezed angrily,
"what ah do not want to happen. As you verah well know, Mr. Genius author of Tense Jamaican
Degenerates.' As you verah well know!" His dull old eyes brightened with hiry.

I stepped in. We'd come here to close a deal, not to trade insults. "I'm sorry, Mr. Marston. Dr. Gerber
has only been involved with the technical aspects. I'm sure he was not aware that...."

Gasping for breath, Van went on as if I hadn't spoken. Harry had struck a nerve. "Ah am not going to rot
in the ground. And ah am not going to burn in no fire. I am going to stay just as ah am for evvah and a
day!" He glared at Harry with pure hatred.

"Yes, sir!" I said with an ingratiating smile. "And Fletcher & Co. is going to make it happen for you. Your
guidance system is in our car. All systems go! I've got the plans right here." I patted my briefcase. "If
you'd care to...."

"I'm sure that you distinguished gentlemen must be absolutely famished?" Eva said, drifting out of the
garden. The contrast between her swivel-ing hips and her refined, magnolia-blossom voice was exquisite.
Those pants could have been painted on. Briefly I let myself imagine licking the paint off.

At lunch I was polite and shared Marston's stewed corn and zucchini. Harry and Evangeline had
TV-dinners of Mexican food.
"Eva don't like vegetables" Mars-ton confided in me. "Ah have to eat just about ewathing that garden
grows." A TV-screen-faced android cleared the dishes away.
The screen was playing an Old South movie starring Shirley Temple and Mr. Bojangles. "Oh my
goo'ness" the android murmured, and set a bottle of bourbon on the table. Happily I poured myself a
drink.

There really had been something special about the vegetables. Eating them had filled me with an unusual
sense of ... completeness. "The soil is special" Marston was saying. I listened with a patient smile. "Mah
plot is right on the spot where a meteor struck." He leaned across the table with an expression of senile
cunning. "We found part of it, too. The remains of an alien spaceship. Ah made it into mah sarcophagus."

Harry had been busy watching Ev-angeline chew, but this last remark drew him into the conversation.
"Chariots of the Gods, Mr. Marston? Fact is stranger than ficton, eh?"

That little vein on the old man's forehead popped out again. He stood up angrily. "You just come on out
to the barn with me, toad-head. Ah have nevah...." A wet, heavy cough cut him off.

In an instant Evangeline was at his side. In between the brutal coughs Marston was gasping air with
pathetic little whoops. His face was red, and his eyes bulged out. Suddenly a thick gusher of blood
vomited out of his mouth. The eyes went out like lights. He was dead when he hit the floor.

Evangeline looked wild-eyed from him to me to Harry., "You..." she got in a thin strained voice. Then she
began throwing things. A metal trivet caught Harry in the temple, but I managed to grab her wrists before
she got the carving knives. I had been wrong when I'd said she wouldn't care if Marston died. I didn't