"Rudy Rucker & John Shirley - Pockets" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rucker Rudy)

Wendel thought: Out-Monkey? And the thing echoed psychically back at himтАФOut-Mon
тАФwith the alien thought coming at him like a voice in his head, mocking, drawling, sarca
and infinitely hip.
The Out-Monkey swelled, huge but with no real size to it in any human sense, and the fa
of space rippled with its motionsтАФthe Devil's motorboat indeedтАФand Wendel felt his w
body flexing and wobbling like an image in a funhouse mirror. Beneath the space wave
sinister undertow began tugging at him. Wendel felt he would burst with the disorientation
all.
"DadтАФwe've gotta go! Let's get back to the world! Tell, him, Jeremy!"
"No worries yet," said Threakman grinning and flaring his nostrils as if to inhale the w
all-pervading rush. "Steady as she goes, mate. Your dad and me, we've 'ad some practice
the Out-Monkeys. We can 'ang 'ere a bit longer."
"Look at the faces, Wendel!" cried Dad. "Look for Jena!"
Around the Out-Monkey orbited the people imprisoned on its vast bubble. They seeme
rotate around the living hole in space, caught up in the fractals that crawled around its ed
faces that were both ecstatic and miserable; zoned-out and hysterical.
"There goes George Gravid," said Dad, pointing. "The original guy from DeGroot." We
stared, spotting a businessman in a black suit. And there, not too far from him wereтАФBa
and Xiao-Xiao?
"Come on, come on, come on," Dad was chanting, and then he gave a wild laugh. "
There she is! It's Jena!" His laughter was cracked and frantic. "It's Mom, Wendel! I kn
could find her!"
Wendel lookedтАФand thought he saw her. Looking hard at her had a telescopic effect,
concentration itself was the optical instrument, and his vision zoomed in on her faceтАФit
his mom, though her eyes were blotted with silver, like the faddish contacts people wore in
World. All those rotating around the Out-Monkey had silvered eyes, mirror-eyes endle
looking into themselves.
Torn, Wendel hesitatedтАФand then the fractal leviathan swept closerтАФhe
something like its shadow fall over him, though there was no one light source here to thro
shadow. It was as if the greater dimensional inclusiveness of its being overshadowed the o
limited-dimensional beings here . . . and you could feel its "shadow" in your soul. . . .
"Dad!" Wendel shouted in panic, and his father yelled something back, but he couldn't m
it outтАФthere was a torrent of white-noise crackle upwelling all around him in the grow
"shadow" of the Out-Monkey. "Dad! We have to go!" shrieked Wendel.
And then Dad plunged forward, arrowing in toward Mom, and Wendel felt him
on the point of a wild, uncontrolled tumble.
"Ol'roit, mate," said Threakman, grabbing Wendel's arm and pulling him up short. "Keep
'ead now. Ungodly strong rush, innit? It's 'ard not to go all the way in. But rememberтАФif
really want, yer can 'old back from its pullin' field. Let's ease in, nice and quiet-like, an
and snag your da."
Wendel and Threakman inched forwardтАФWendel feeling the pull of the Out-Monke
strong as gravity. Yet, just as Threakman said, you didn't have to let it take you, didn't hav
let it pull you down into that swarming blackness of the Out-Monkey's fractal membra
Jeremy Threakman's grip on his arm was solid as the granite spine of the planet E
Wretched, stinking Jeremy Threakman knew his way around the Out-Monkeys. . . .
Wendel stared in at Mom and Dad: they were swirling around one anot
orbiting a mutual center of emptiness, just as they and the others orbited the gre
center of emptiness within the higher-dimensional being. It reminded Wendel of a partic
carnival ride, where people whirled in place on a metal arm and their whirling cars were
whirled around a central axis.