"Nancy Kress - Wetlands Preserve" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"Bye, Mrs. Belling!" Carlo called. "See you tomorrow!"

Lisa watched Danilo flinch when she wheeled in Carlo. Revulsion, or guilt? She hoped it was guilt.
"Carlo, this is Uncle Danilo."

"Hi, Carlo."

"Hi! Mommy, he gots a bord!"

"A 'beard,' sweetie. He has a beard."

"Can I touch the beard?"

Danilo knelt by Carlo's chair. Lisa moved away, unwilling to stand that close to Danilo. But on the warm
air she caught the scent of him anyway, bringing such a rush of visceral memory that she turned abruptly
away. God, how long had it been for her тАж and never like with Danilo.

Lisa Jackson and Danilo Aglipay. Salty working-class American and wealthy cultured Filipino.
Ideological purists, committed activists, the sexual envy of an entire campus, with her blonde small-boned
beauty and his exotic dark intensity. Except that the working-class salt-of-the-earth parents shoved Lisa
out of the family when she took up with a "gook," and the wealthy Filipino swore he would never go
home to the father who made his money exploiting the planet, and the blonde beauty swelled with
pregnancy that ruined the activist plans so much that Danilo left, spouting speeches.

And out of that wreck I made a life, Lisa reminded herself fiercely. Graduate school, Carlo, the internship
at Kenton. The alien animals. Talk about world-changing events! If Danilo knew about the aliens тАж but
he wouldn't. It was her knowledge, her life, and no whiff of masculine pheromones would ruin it for her.
Not now, not ever.

"The beard feels strangey," Carlo said. It was his latest pet word.

"Oh, it's strangey, all right," Lisa said, and Danilo looked at her.

She fed Carlo and Danilo too (inescapable), read Carlo a story, put him to bed. Danilo watched silently
from his chair at the table. After Lisa closed the bedroom door, she said, "Now go. I have work to do."

"Work? Now?"

"All the time, Danilo."

"And you think it does anybody any good, this work? This studying minute details of ecosystems even as
the exploiters destroy them out from under you?"

"Probably as much actual good as your 'non-violent confrontations' at Greenpeace."

"I'm not with Greenpeace any more," he said, and something grim in his tone, coming through despite the
soft accent, made Lisa look directly at him.

"You're not?"