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

don't get involved with what doesn't concern us. Jack never did. I add, "I'm
just telling you what I think. I can do that, can't I?" and hear my voice
stuck someplace between pleading and anger.
Jack hears it, too. He scowls, stands with his beer, puts his hand
gently on my shoulder. "Sure, Bets. You can say whatever you want to me.
But nobody else, you hear? I don't want no trouble, especially to you and the
kids. This ain't our problem. Just be grateful _we're_ all healthy, knock on
wood."
He smiles and goes into the living room. Jackie switches off the
Nintendo without being yelled at; she's good that way. I look out the kitchen
window, but it's too dark to see anything but my own reflection, and anyway
the window faces north, not east.
I haven't crossed the river since Jackie was born at Emerton Memorial,
seven years ago. And then I was in the hospital less than twenty-four hours
before I made Jack take me home. Not because of the infections, of course --
that hadn't all started yet. But it has now, and what if next time instead of
the youngest Nordstrum boy, it's Jackie who needs endozine? Or Sean?
Once you've been to Emerton Memorial, nobody but your family will go
near you. And sometimes not even them. When Mrs. Weimer came home from
surgery, her daughter-in-law put her in that back upstairs room and left her
food on disposable trays in the doorway and put in a chemical toilet. Didn't
even help the old lady crawl out of bed to use it. For a whole month it went
on like that -- surgical masks, gloves, paper gowns -- until Rosie Weimer was
positive Mrs. Weimer hadn't picked up any mutated drug-resistant bacteria in
Emerton Memorial. And Hal Weimer didn't say a word against his wife.
"People are scared, but they'll do the right thing," Jack said, the
only other time I tried to talk to him about it. Jack isn't much for talking.
And so I don't. I owe him that.
But in the city -- in all the cities -- they're not just scared.
They're terrified. Even without listening to the news I hear about the riots
and the special government police and half the population sick with the new
germs that only endozine cures -- sometimes. I don't see how they're going to
have much energy for one murdered small-town doctor. And I don't share Jack's
conviction that people in Emerton will automatically do the right thing. I
remember all too well that sometimes they don't. How come Jack doesn't
remember, too?
But he's right about one thing: I don't owe this town anything.
I stack the supper dishes in the sink and get Jackie started on her
homework.
****
The next day, I drive down to the Food Mart parking lot.
There isn't much to see. It rained last night. Next to the dumpster
lie a wadded-up surgical glove and a piece of yellow tape like the police use
around a crime scene. Also some of those little black cardboard boxes from
the stuff that gets used up by the new holographic TV cameras. That's it.
"You heard what happened to Dr. Bennett," I say to Sean at dinner.
Jack's working again. Jackie sits playing with the Barbie doll she doesn't
know I know she has on her lap. Sean looks at me sideways, under the heavy
fringe of his dark bangs, and I can't read his expression. "He was killed for
giving out too many antibiotics."