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

know there are things you can't apologize for.
"Eliz...Betty, I'm not here about the past. I'm here about Dr.
Bennett's murder."
"That doesn't have anything to do with me."
"It has to do with all of us. Dan Moore lives next door to you."
I don't say anything.
"He and Ceci and Jim Dyer and Tom Brunelli are the ringleaders in a
secret organization to close Emerton Memorial Hospital. They think the
hospital is a breeding ground for the infections resistant to every antibiotic
except endozine. Well, they're right about that -- all hospitals are. But
Dan and his group are determined to punish any doctor who prescribes endozine,
so that no organisms develop a resistance to it, too, and it's kept effective
in case one of _them_ needs it."
"Sylvia -- " the name tastes funny in my mouth, after all this time "
-- I'm telling you this doesn't have anything to do with me."
"And I'm telling you it does. We need you, Eliz...Betty. You live
next door to Dan and Ceci. You can tell us when they leave the house, who
comes to it, anything suspicious you see. We're not a vigilante group, Betty,
like they are. We aren't doing anything illegal. We don't kill people, and
we don't blow up bridges, and we don't threaten people like the Nordstrums who
get endozine for their sick kids but are basically uneducated blue collar -- "
She stops. Jack and I are basically uneducated blue collar. I say
coldly, "I can't help you, Sylvia."
"I'm sorry, Betty. That wasn't what I meant. Look, this is more
important than anything that happened a decade and a half ago! Don't you
_understand_?" She leans toward me across the table. "The whole country's
caught in this thing. It's already a public health crisis as big as the
Spanish influenza epidemic of 1918, and it's only just started!
Drug-resistant bacteria can produce a new generation every twenty minutes,
they can swap resistent genes not only within a species but across _different_
species. The bacteria are _winning_. And people like the Moores are taking
advantage of that to contribute further to the breakdown of even basic social
decency."
In high school Sylvia had been on the debating team. But so, in that
other life, had I. "If the Moores' group is trying to keep endozine from
being used, then aren't they also fighting against the development of more
drug-resistant bacteria? And if that's so, aren't they the ones, not you, who
are ultimately aiding the country's public health?"
"Through dynamiting. And intimidation. And murder. Betty, I know you
don't approve of those things. I wouldn't be here telling you about our
countergroup if I thought you did. Before I came here, we looked very
carefully at you. At the kind of person you are. Are now. You and your
husband are law-abiding people, you vote, you make a contribution to the
Orphans of AIDS Fund, you -- "
"How did you know about that? That's supposed to be a secret
contribution!"
" -- you signed the petition to protect the homeless from harassment.
Your husband served on the jury that convicted Paul Keene of fraud, even
though his real-estate scheme was so good for the economy of Emerton. You --
"