"May,.Julian.-.Galactic.Milieu.1.-.Jack.The.Bodiless" - читать интересную книгу автора (May Julian)

The old man in the pool leapt like a speared sturgeon. "Bordel de merde!"
It's only me, Uncle Rogi.
"Dammit! One of these days you're going to give me cardiac arrest doing that!"
[Laughter.] I apologize. It was the old college song. I had been thinking of it myself just as I arrived. It brought back all kinds of memories.
"Now look what you made me do." Rogi was accusing. His eruption had splashed hot water over the onion animals and they were flailing in wild distress, the tiny teeth of the flowers chattering like elfin castanets. "You know the park rules about disturbing the native lifeforms! These little chompers are sensitive. If any of 'em decide to croak, I could be blamed and end up paying a helluva fineЧ"
Calm yourself. Look. I've restored them.
"Damn good thing," Rogi muttered, climbing out onto the not-quite-lichens. The clumps of red onions were swaying luxuriously now, and a delicate humming sound filled the grotto. "Don't often hear that. It's their full-tummy serenade."
It was the least I could do.
Rogi chuckled. Naked and steaming, he retrieved the brandy flask, which fortunately hadn't spilled, and tucked it into a safe place. "I'm feeling pretty hungry myself. Want to share some chili cagado with me, mon fantome?"
Thank you. But no.
"Too substantial for your Lylmik guts, eh? You used to love it."
Unifex's thought was wistful: I don't suppose you brought along any Habitant pea soup . . . ?
"Ate the last of it two days ago."
The Lylmik's mind sighed.
Rogi squatted and set up a small microwave campstove. He dipped a pot of water from the spring, peered into it, and extracted a black gelatinous blob and a glass-shrimp that were swimming languidly about the container's bottom. The invertebrates were returned to the pool and the pot set inside the stove to boil. Rogi had tossed in two Aqua Pura tablets for seasoning, since Denali bred tough microorganisms as well as tough colonials.
"So you couldn't resist coming after me." The old man dried himself with a diminutive towel and put his long Johns and socks back on.
Unifex said: It was a species of sentimental journey. I had felt compelled to avoid Denali during her first-cycle sojourn here.
Rogi hesitated. "You want to tell me about the two of you? All I know is the little bit Cloudie and Hagen told meЧand they didn't know all that much."
Not now. Perhaps later.
"M'mm." Rogi took the seething pot out of the stove and filled two bowls and a large cup, adding a different-colored cube to each container of water. After four seconds of effervescence, the highly compressed food reconstituted and the pungent aroma of chili rose from the first bowl, and the smell of cinnamon-apple cobbler from the second. The cup was full of black coffee. Rogi added five lumps of sugar and a shot of Armagnac to the latter, and sprinkled almost 200 grams of grated natural-state Tillamook cheddar onto the chili.
A sibilant, yearning chorus came from the crab holes, and there was a frantic blinking of eyes. Rogi chuckled wickedly. "Cheeky little bastards. Remember how they used to eat Adidas if you left 'em outside the tent in these snow caves?"
Unifex laughed. It said: I note that you wear inedible Salomon ski boots now. Very comfortable-looking. I like the new Rossi boards, too. But isn't it rather imprudent of you not to wear an environmental suit?
"For sissies! I been skiing my brains out for a hundred fifty years in this outfit and I haven't froze my bizoune off yet. You'll notice that my wrist-com's modern enough.
Keeps me alerted to weather changes. And if I get snowed in or come a cropper or even run outa coffee or munchies, the Ski Patrol or a robot monitor'll home in on its transponder-locator and take care of me. I knew this storm was on the way. I figure to spend the night here, then call for a shuttlebug to fly me back to the park lodge tomorrow if she don't blow out as per forecast. Wouldn't mind at all spending the last week of my vacation lolling around in styleЧ"
I'm sorry, Uncle Rogi. I've come to collect you.
"I'm booked for seven more days, dammit!"
You are well rested and quite able to begin work on your Memoirs againЧas am I. Take your time finishing your meal, but tonight you'll sleep in your own bed back home in New Hampshire.
"Back to Earth tonightЧ? That'll mean hopping the hype at maximum displacement factor. I'll be a nervous wreck!"
I'll take you myself . . . more gently.
Rogi's eyes narrowed and he squinted at the portion of air from which his invisible companion's thoughts appeared to emanate. "So! You Lylmik do have a mitigator for the pain of hyperspatial translationЧjust like Ti-Jean always said you did."
Yes. Jack was perceptive as always. But the device is not yet appropriate for general use among our client races in the Galactic Milieu. You will make no mention of it.
Rogi spooned down chili and drank coffee. "I wouldn't dream of violating the glorious Lylmik master scheme . . . But what's the damn rush to get me humping again on the Memoirs?"
One has one's reasons.
Rogi rolled his eyes hopelessly. Then for some time he ate in silence, his mind idly recapitulating the things he had already written and shuffling through what would come next, in the period following the Great Intervention. "Gonna take another book, big as the last one, to cover the thirty-eight years of the Simbiari Proctorship. Be a pain in the ass for me to get all those family shenanigans sorted out, too."
Unifex said: I want you to skip over most of that and begin immediately on Jack's early life and disincarnation, and the growing threat of human opposition to Galactic citizenship. Then you will describe Dorothea's part in the earlier drama, and finish up with your view of the Metapsychic Rebellion, making a Milieu Trilogy. The events of the painful Proctorship years, the time before the Human Polity was admitted to the Galactic Concilium, have been covered well enough by Philip and Lucille in their own autobiographies. But they never knew Jack's full story, or Diamond'sЧ
"Or yours, mon cher fantome."
Or mine.
"I'll have to backtrack some to make it hang together, you know. Start out with a kind of retrospective digression. And I'll still need a lot of fill-in help from you to give a proper overall picture."
I realize that.
"Is that whyЧ" Rogi paused. He swallowed hard, banishing a certain thought before it could be formulated, even subvocally. "Eh bien, mon fils. I reckon you know what you're doing by now."
Beyond a doubt. To paraphrase one of your favorite fantasy writers, even the most modest intellect can hardly help learning a thing or two after six million years.
The old man grinned with forced cheerfulness at the vaporous air. "Six million . . . Ah, those self-rejuvenating Remillard genes! A real drag, immortality, eh? Not that I'm ready to knock it myself yet, you understand. Um... do you know . . . can you foresee when I'm . . ."
Not really. Moi, je ne suis pas le bon dieu, j't'assure! But I do intend to see to it that you survive at least long enough to finish the family chronicle.
"Well, thanks all to hell for small favors."
Rogi licked the last of the apple cobbler from his spoon and drank the dregs of the coffee. Then he switched the stove to the dishwashing mode and thrust the tableware inside. A moment later, he began to pack everything away, singing the chorus of Dartmouth College's "Winter Song" under his breath.
At length the Remillard Family Ghost said: Are you ready, Uncle Rogi? The trip home will take only a moment. There will be none of the usual discomfort of hyperspatial translation experienced in a starship.
"Not in my underwear, dammit!"
The old man began to throw his clothes back on. He managed his pants and shirt before he disappeared abruptly from the snow grotto, and all his gear with him.
The lichenoid cast a faint phosphorescent glow about the newly darkened chamber. There was a rustling sound, then a medley of plops as the crablike exotic animals came rushing from their burrows to scavenge leftover bits of Earth cheese. Outside the snow grotto, the Denali blizzard wind howled.
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