"Card, Orson Scott - Heal Thyself" - читать интересную книгу автора (Card Orson Scott)

South American, European, and American fauna that they pictured. Of course,
to protect the animals against the dangers of straying and the far greater
menace of poaching, the park was fenced about with an impenetrable
barrier-not illustrated in the brochures-of fences, ditches, wires,
walls. The thing that made no sense at all, however, was the warning about
absolute biosecurity All observations of the park inside the boundaries were
to take place from within completely biosealed buses, and anyone who tried
to circumvent the bioseal would be ejected from the park and prosecuted. They
did not say what would happen to anyone who succeeded in getting out into
the open air.

Biosealed buses suggested a serious biohazard. And yet there was nothing in
the brochures to indicate what that biohazard might be. It's not as if herds
of bison could sneak onto the buses if you cracked the seal.

The answer to this mystery was no doubt the answer to my question about why
Elizio died, and I impatiently demanded that my parents explain.

They urged me to be patient, and then took me right past the regular buses
and on to a nondescript door with the words --in small letters-- "Special Tours."

"What's so special?" I asked.

They ignored me. The clerk seemed to know without explanation exactly what my
parents wanted. Then I understood that my parents must have called ahead.

It was a private tour. And not on a bus. We were taken down an elevator into
a deep basement, and then put aboard a train on which we rode for more than
an hour-longer than the trip from Saltillo to El Paso, though I suspect we
were going much slower. Underground, who can tell?

We came up another elevator, and, like the underground train, this one had no
trappings of tourism. This was a place where people worked; gawking was only
a secondary concern.

We were led by a slightly impatient-looking woman to a smallish room with
windows on four sides and dozens of sets of binoculars in a couple of boxes.
There were also chairs, some stacked, some scattered about almost randomly.
As if someone hadn't bothered to straighten up after a meeting.

"Are they close?" asked Mother.

"We're here because the water is nearby," said the woman. "If they aren't
close now, they will be soon."

"Where's the water?" asked Father.

The woman pointed vaguely in a direction. It's clear she didn't want us there.
But Mother and Father had the gift of patience. They were here for me, and
bore the disdain of the scientist. If that's what she was.