"Marc Laidlaw - Flight Risk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laidlaw Marc)

"Do тАж do you know if he's had any inoculations?" he called back into the other room.

"What?" The giant's shadow swam up beyond the frosted glass. "You mean, like, polio shots?"

"The usual vaccines. Measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus. Kid stuff."
"They found him in an orphanage."

"There must have been medical staff."

"The place was a hundred years old. Rotting wood. A lot of the kids were sick from the same thing, but it
was nothing you could catch. That plant in Belarus or wherever тАж the one where they had the leak тАж"

"Hell," Foster said, leaning closer to the boy. "If that's it, if he's that sickтАФ"

"No one's expecting any miracles out of you. We just want to make sure he's strong enough to make it
until we've unloaded him. So you check him out."

"If he'll let me."

"He won't give you any trouble. Never has."

Foster reached for the boy's wrist, took his pulse. From his bag he took the stethoscope and listened to
the boy's chest through a thin sweater. The boy's breath was warm and smelled of sugar and milk and
something else, a smell remembered from youth, working on old radios and television sets. It was like the
smell of electrical discharge, yet not quite ozone. And it was stronger, closer to the boy. He leaned in,
nostrils flaring, and the boy reared back abruptly.

"Sorry," Foster said. "Didn't mean toтАФ"

"Well?" The giant had come up quietly behind him.

"He's well enough. But he could use some fresh air, some exercise. It's not healthy for a child to be shut
up in a place like this."

"It's out of the question. He has toys, if he'd play with them."

Foster hadn't noticed the box full of jumbled plastic pieces pushed into one corner of the room. Decks of
cards, sponge-rubber balls. No cars or planes or anything that would make noise. Nothing such a boy
would be likely to have any interest in playing with.

Foster rose and walked to the window for a look at the icy day. He poked a few fingers through the
dusty blinds. "Air," he whispered.

The window ledge was brick, crusted with grime, mortar that had welled up like grey dough. Pigeons
milled somewhere nearby; he could hear them cooing.

There was a very small playground across the street, between old apartment buildings, a few bare trees
stretching up from muddy snow around climbing equipment the color of rust. Even looking at the iron
bars put the tang of cold metal in his mouth.