"Friesner, Esther - Sea-Section" - читать интересную книгу автора (Friesner Esther M)

"She means what goes around comes around," Justin said smugly. "I told you not to eat that third cheese straw at the Wilberforce's cocktail party, but would you listen? Oh, nooooo. I bet lab tests will prove this is all on account of excess calcium."

"That might explain the clams," said the chief obstetrician, "but not all these cockroaches. And the grunion."

"Keep going, I think I see a frog," said the nurse at his elbow.

"Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny," the anesthesiologist repeated as if it were her mantra. "The biological development of the individual in this case the human fetus -- repeats or summarizes the evolutionary history of that individual. Which is why my cousin Eugene has gills; but then again, his mother came from Philadelphia."

"Yeah, that's right!" Jennifer cried. "The human embryo goes through different developmental stages where it looks like a fish, then an amphibian, then a reptile-"

"That'd be Cousin Bruce," the anesthesiologist supplied.

"-- then a bird, and finally a mammal. It climbs the evolutionary ladder from lowest life-form to highest. I remember that from ninth grade biology!"

"So do I!" said the assistant ob-gyn brightly.

"But that's only supposed to happen in the embryo itself," Justin moaned. "What is it with this -- this mob scene?"

"Eeeeee-yuck, I hate snakes," said the chief obstetrician, holding something at arm's length.

"Wimp," the nurse sneered, dropping it into a vacant pan.

The assistant shrugged. "Everything's committees these days." A flight of doves startled everyone into silence, but the attendant pediatrician had the presence of mind to open the O.R. door and release them.

"We're getting closer, Mrs. Holdstock," the obstetrician said. He tried to keep it light and cheerful, but the sound of his teeth grinding was perfectly audible and even a little crunchy. "I think I've got hold of a lemur."

"Awwwwwww!" All previous hostilities were forgotten as the aforementioned creature was indeed produced, flooding the room with immense waves of ecologically correct adorability.

"Keep it away from the snake!" someone shouted.

The sight of the lemur with its large, intelligent, stereoptic eyes did something to Justin. Warm fuzzies begat warm fuzzies and he fled back to his assigned place on the North Jennifer side of the drapes. Holding his wife's hand -- being careful of the IV feed, of course -- he whispered to her, "Don't worry, darling, if they're up to lemurs, we'll be seeing little Jeremiah real soon now. Everything's gonna be all right."

"But what happened to me?" Jennifer insisted. "How did it happen? Why?" She sounded just like some of his clients when the market went yeek-crash-thooooom.

"Honey, none of that matters," he purred in her ear. "All that matters now is
--"

"It's a boy!" the obstetrician announced.

"I'll take that," the pediatrican said, swiftly and smoothly stepping into his proper role in the ordained scheme of things.

"We'll clean up," the nurses chirped as all the absent normalcies came clicking back into place.

"I'll just run some of this stuff down to the cafeteria, what say?" said a helpful orderly, gathering up the various fauna-filled trays and wheeling them out of the O.R. on a gurney. (The lemur was exempt -- in this world you can be cute or you can be gumbo, but not both.)

"-- that we get our version of this story to the networks first," Justin concluded.

"I love you, darling," said Jennifer, misty eyed. "And I want Geena Davis to play me."

"Uh-oh," said the chief obstetrician. He paused, sew-'er-up tools in hand, and stared at something that only he was positioned to see.