"Fitch-SarahAtTheTidePool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fitch Marina)

research; there was nothing she'd rather be doing. Nothing else worth doing.

Sarah pressed her hand against the side of the aquarium. "Damn you, Richard,"
she said. "You could at least leave me this."

One of the lab techs leaned toward her. "Dr. Huron?"

"Nothing, Freda," Sarah said, forcing a smile. "Just talking to myself."

"I'll be back next week," Jason Whitcomb had said that first Sunday. Sarah
imagined Richard wielding a sledge hammer, shattering the aquarium and the
microscopes. Then she imagined him in a heap, his limbs partially eaten away by
acid. A chill satisfaction filled her, followed by an aching loneliness.

Sarah sets the hermit crab down carefully. It skitters toward the fissure,
scrambling over the top of the decorator crab. The larger crab raises its claws
and sidesteps in pursuit of the intruder.

"Someday you'll get out of the tide pool," Sarah tells the hermit crab. "Just
don't get caught in another one."

The following Sunday Sarah walked into the lab to find Jason Whitcomb perched on
the counter by the sink. "Been to Thieves' Point lately?" he asked.

Sarah looked away. "Yesterday."

"Ah, been thinking. And what have you decided?"

Sarah rubbed her temples to keep the headache at bay. "Why this? Why go to all
this trouble?"

Jason shrugged. "Because not only do we want to kill him, we want to discredit
his research. If he dies of some weird, mysterious neurotoxin-- one which,
incidentally, we'll also use to contaminate his cultures --the public will never
trust his nano-engineered skin."

"If someone finds out about it."

"We'll make sure someone does." He smiled at her. "The public loves a mystery
and the media loves to give it to them."

The headache blinded Sarah momentarily. She closed her eyes. "Wouldn't it be
enough to destroy his lab?"

"We could leave him a vegetable."

She opened her eyes. "So whatever I decide, Richard is dead."

"Looks that way." Jason studied her. "You know, Dr. Huron, at your age it's
tough setting up a new lab with a new corporation . . . providing anyone hires