"Nancy Kress - Nano Comes to Clifford Falls" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

curtains and sofa with nano ones? And that TV! You could get a real big one, with an unbelievable
picture."

I put my elbows on the table and leaned toward her. "I'll tell you the truth, Em: I don't know. I get nano
food and diapers, and I got some school clothes for Will, but anything else ... I don't know."

"You're just being an idiot!" she said. She almost shouted it--way too angry for just my saggy sofa. I
reached out and pulled off the sloping hat. Emma's eye was swollen nearly shut, and every color of
squash in my garden.

All at once she started sobbing. "Ted ... he never done anything like that before ... it's terrible on men,
being laid off ! They get so bored and mad--"

"He wasn't laid off, he quit," I said, but gently.

"Same thing! He just scowls himself around the house, yells at the kids--they're glad to be back in school,
let me tell you!--and criticizes everything I do, or he orders Scotch from the nano--did order it until
Mayor Johnson outlawed any nano liquor and--"

"He did? The mayor did?" I said, startled.

"Yeah. And so last Thursday, Ted and I had this big fight, and ... and..." Suddenly she changed tone.
"You don't know anything, Carol! You sit here safe and alone, thinking you're so superior to nano, just
like you always acted so superior to poor Jack--oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that!"

"Probably you did," I said evenly, "but it's all right. Really it is, Em."

All at once she got defiant. "You're thinking I'm just dumping on you because Ted hit me. Well, I'm not.
It was only that once, most of the time he's a good husband. Our new house by the lake will be done in a
few more weeks and then everything'll be better!"

I didn't see how, but all I said was, "I'll bet the house is pretty."

"It's gorgeous! It's got a blue-brick fireplace in the living room--blue bricks! And it's equipped with just
everything, all those robo-appliances like you see on TV--I won't have to do hardly anything!"

"I can't wait to see it," I said.

"You'll love it," she said, put her hat back on so it covered her eye, and stared at me with triumph and
fear.
****
I pulled Will out of school to home-school him. He didn't mind once I got the Bellingham grandkids to
school at my place, and then Caddie Alghren. The Bellinghams were farmers going bust. Mr. Bellingham
was still doing dairy, though, even while his crops rotted in the fields. Mrs. Bellingham's always been
sickly and she never struck me as real smart. But Hal Bellingham is smart, and he looked at me real sharp
when I said I would home-school his grandkids because the teachers were all quitting.

"Not all, Carol."

"No, not yet. And some won't quit. But the government's not getting much tax money because nobody's