"Nancy Kress - The Sleepless - Sleeping Dogs" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

Indivino to Donna and the sleepless pups. It doesn't matter which pup he picks, or if he ever actually comes back fo
only matters that he pays before he leaves.
Which he does. Two and a half thousand dollars, and in certified preloaded credit chips, not just transfers. I ho
chips in my hand while Donna dances and cheers around the kitchen, setting the dogs to barking, and Precious stands
her high chair and crows. It's chaos. For once, I don't care. This money is going to make all the difference in the world to us.

Three weeks later, everything ends.
"Come look at this here," Daddy calls through the screen door. He's sitting at the kitchen table in front of ou
terminal, researching what he calls "ad futures" on the Subnet. His friend Denny, with the truck, showed him how. Daddy won't t
how Denny learned, or what Denny's buying or selling that he needs underground ads. But I know the Subnet's not easy to ride.
all that hard to log onto, but after that it has a way of melting away unless you know all the key underground code wor
procedures, which keep changing all the time. "The shadow economy," vidnews calls it, or sometimes "the ghost ma
Supposedly you can get anything there, if you know how.
"Carol Ann!" Daddy calls again, louder. "Come see this."
"I'm busy," I call back from the yard. I'm watching Precious dig a hole with a kitchen fork. She sits in the slanting fall sun
covered with sweat and dirt, happy as day. Somewhere in the woods I hear Donna yelling at dogs. They still aren't training properly. She's h
terrible time with them.
"I said come here, Carol Ann, and I mean come here!" Daddy yells. Reluctantly I get myself up and go into the house.
It's funny about getting a little money. All last winter and spring, when I was scrounging for rice and beans enough for us, and Daddy was w
his ass off to get the money to buy the genemod embryos implanted in Leisha, and Donna had just one dressтАФall that long cold winter eve
was in a good mood. Sunny, hopeful. We were nice to each other. But since we got Tony Indivino's credit chips, everybody's been ten
snappy. Maybe I'm always that way, but Donna and Daddy aren't. Or weren't.
The stakes are higher now. Daddy has to figure out the right places to buy ads: Subnet sites that will be profitable, as well as sa
the law. We can't afford to make mistakes. And the news is full of the feds closing illegal genemod labs, and the pups won't listen to Donna unle
right there with a piece of meatтАФthat's what she meant when she said they're like cats, they only do what you want them to if
standing right there with a prize or a poke. Everybody's nervous.
For once, we have something to lose.
"Tell me what this means," Daddy growls, and I bend over the screen. It's an FDA recommendation to Congress about
genemod animals. The sentences are long and difficult, with a lot of scientific words I don't understand.
"It's about what a new law should allow in genetic engineering," I say. "The summary says 'No genemods tha
external appearance or basic internal functioning such that a creature deviates significantly from other members of not o
genus and species but also its breed.'"
"I can read!" Daddy snaps. After a minute he says, "I'm sorry, Carol Ann. But I need to know what every bit of it m
You explain it. One sentence at a time."
"Daddy, I can'tтАФ"
"Sure you can. You're the smartest one of us, and don't think I don't know you know it."
"ButтАФ"
"Please, baby. Help me understand."
So I do. One sentence at a time, guessing at words, groping around to lay my hands on the meaning. It takes a long
Right up until the minute I hear Precious start screaming.
We're out the door in half a second. But I can't see her anywhere. And then the screaming stops.
Donna comes running from the woods, yelling "Richard! Richard!" and it takes me a minute to realize she's yelling f
dog. Her eyes are crazy. We all stop like the air holds us, only our heads swiveling. I can't see Precious. I can't see her
then Donna, who's got hearing almost as good as the dogs', tears off into the woods to the left of the house.
I hear the snapping before I see Richard. His jaws are working over a piece of meat that Donna must have given
piece of reward meat. He lies down peacefully eating it, the shifting of his head and body on the fallen leaves makin
rustling noises. I hear the rustles, because suddenly these woods are the quietest things I ever heard. The quietest th
ever will hear again.
Precious lies about eight feet away, down a little hill with a stream at the bottom. Her neck is broken. Her hand
smeared with beef juice, from the steak she tried to take away from Richard. Maybe she wanted a bite. Or mayb