"Nancy Kress - Evolution" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"Then it won't mean anything to you to say that this mutated staph has
at least that much potential -- " again he paused and gulped air " -- for
rapid and fatal transmission. It flourishes everywhere. Even on doorknobs."
"So why the fuck are you _smiling_?" Alexander. That was the picture
of the general. Alexander the Great.
"Because I...because the CDC distributed...I was on the national team
to discover..." His face changes again. Goes even whiter. And he pitches
over onto the floor.
I grab him, roll him face up, and feel his forehead. He's burning up.
I bolt for the door. "Nurse! Doctor! There's a sick doctor here!"
Nobody comes.
I run down the corridors. Respiratory Therapy is empty. So is Support
Services. I jab at the elevator button, but before it comes I run back to
Randy.
And stand above him, lying there crumpled on the floor, laboring to
breathe.
I'd dreamed about a moment like this for years. Dreamed it waking and
asleep, in Emerton and in Bedford Hills and in Jack's arms. Dreamed it in a
thousand ridiculous melodramatic versions. And here it is, Randy helpless and
pleading, and me strong, standing over him, free to walk away and let him die.
Free.
I wring out a towel in cold water and put it on his forehead. Then I
find ice in the refrigerator in a corner of the lab and substitute that. He
watches me, his breathing wheezy as old machinery.
"Elizabeth. Bring me...syringe in a box on...that table."
I do it. "Who should I get for you, Randy? Where?"
"Nobody. I'm not...as bad...as I sound. Yet. Just the
initial...dyspnea." He picks up the syringe.
"Is there medicine for you in there? I thought you said endozine
wouldn't work on this new infection." His color is a little better now.
"Not medicine. And not for me. For you."
He looks at me steadily. And I see that Randy would never plead, never
admit to helplessness. Never ever think of himself as helpless.
He lowers the hand holding the syringe back to the floor. "Listen,
Elizabeth. You have...almost certainly have..."
Somewhere, distantly, a siren starts to wail. Randy ignores it. All
of a sudden his voice becomes much firmer, even though he's sweating again and
his eyes burn bright with fever. Or something.
"This staph is resistant to everything we can throw it. We cultured it
and tried. Cephalosporins and aminoglycosides and vancomycin, even
endozine...I'll go into gram-positive septic shock..." His eyes glaze, but
after a moment he seems to find his thought again. "We exhausted all points
of counterattack. Cell wall, bacterial ribosome, folic acid pathway.
Microbes just evolve countermeasures. Like beta-lactamase."
I don't understand this language. Even talking to himself, he's making
me feel stupid again. I ask something I do understand.
"Why are people killing cows? Are the cows sick, too?"
He focuses again. "Cows? No, they're not sick. Farmers use massive
doses of antibiotics to increase meat and milk production. Agricultural use of
endozine has increased the rate of resistance development by over a thousand