"Rusch-WithoutEnd" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

her sit and argue until the sunset turned the lake golden, and the mosquitos had
driven the other students away.

From that moment on, he and Geneva always talked that way. The philosophy of
physics. The physics of philosophy. He got the education without the equations
and she, she felt free enough to explore the imaginative side of her science--
the tiny particles no one could see, the unified theories, the strings binding
the universe.

There's something out there, Dylan, she would say, and it's more than we are.

He knew that, as he held her papers, in her sunlit office just past their den.
In her crabbed writing, on those dot-matrix computer sheets, was the secret to
something.

If he could touch that, he could touch her. And if he could touch her, he might
be able to hold her.

Forever.

The campus bar was full of people impossibly young. Dylan grabbed his frosty mug
of beer and sat across from Ross, watching the people intermingle. A different
university, a different time. Now the students wore their hair short, and the
professors wore theirs long. Dylan sipped, let the foam catch him full on his
upper lip, and let the sound of co-mingled voices and too loud music wash over
him.

"I worry about you," Ross said. His beer was dark and warm. Its color matched
the tweed blend of his blazer. "You've locked yourself up in that house, and
haven't gone anywhere in weeks. You don't have to get her papers in order before
the end of the term, Dylan. The department just wants them on file."

Dylan shook his head. He wasn't always working. Sometimes he wandered from room
to room, touching her clothes, the small sculpture she had brought back from
Africa, the pieces of Inuit-carved whale bone they had found in Alaska. "I'll
get it done," he said.

"That's not the point." Ross pushed his beer aside, ignoring it as a bit of foam
slopped out. He leaned forward, and would probably have touched Dylan's arm if
Dylan had been the kind of man who permitted it. "She's dead, Dylan. She's gone.
She was a spectacular woman, but now you have to get used to living without
her."

Dylan stared at Ross's hand, outstretched on the scarred wooden table. "But what
if she isn't really dead? I can feel her sometimes, Ross, as close to me as you
are."

"That's part of grievings" Ross said. "You're in the habit of feeling her
presence. It's like a ghost limb. You know it was there; you know what it felt
like, and you can't believe it's gone."