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

 "Stop it," I say. "You don't have any right to investigate me like I
was some criminal!"
Only, of course, I was. Once. Not now. Sylvia's right about that --
Jack and I believe in law and order, but for different reasons. Jack because
that's what his father believed in, and his grandfather. Me, because I
learned in Bedford that enforced rules are the only thing that even half-way
restrains the kind of predators Sylvia James never dreamed of. The kind I
want kept away from my children.
Sylvia says, "We have a lot of people on our side, Betty. People who
don't want to see this town slide into the same kind of violence there is in
Albany and Syracuse and, worst case, New York."
A month ago, New York Hospital in Queens was blown up. The whole
thing, with a series of coordinated timed bombs. Seventeen hundred people
dead in less than a minute.
"It's a varied group," she continues. "Some town leaders, some
housewives, some teachers, nearly all the medical personnel at the hospital.
All people who care what happens to Emerton."
"Then you've got the wrong person here," I say, and it comes out
harsher than I want to reveal. "I don't care about Emerton."
"You have reasons," Sylvia says evenly. "And I'm part of your reasons,
I know. But I think you'll help us, Elizabeth. I know you must be concerned
about your son -- we've all observed what a good mother you are."
So she brought up Sean's name first. I say, "You're wrong again,
Sylvia. I don't need you to protect Sean, and if you've let him get involved
in helping you, you'll wish you'd never been born. I've worked damn hard to
make sure that what happened seventeen years ago never touches him. He
doesn't need to get mixed up in any way with your 'medical personnel at the
hospital.' And Sean sure the hell doesn't owe this town anything, there
wasn't even anybody who would take him in after my aunt died, he had to go to
-- "
The look on her face stops me. Pure surprise. And then something
else.
"Oh my God," she says. "Is it possible you don't know? Hasn't Sean
told you?"
"Told me what?" I stand up, and I'm seventeen years old again, and just
that scared. Sylvia-and-Elizabeth.
"Your son isn't helping our side. He's working for Dan Moore and Mike
Dyer. They use juveniles because if they're caught, they won't be tried as
severely as adults. We think Sean was one of the kids they used to blow up
the bridge over the river."
****
I look first at the high school. Sean isn't there; he hadn't even shown up
for homeroom. No one's home at his friend Tom's house, or at Keith's. He
isn't at the Billiard Ball or the Emerton Diner or the American Bowl. After
that, I run out of places to search.
This doesn't happen in places like Emerton. We have fights at
basketball games and grand theft auto and smashed store windows on Halloween
and sometimes a drunken tragic car crash on prom night. But not secret
terrorists, not counter-terrorist vigilante groups. Not in Emerton.
Not with my son.