"Lee-EbbTide" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lee Mary Soon)

economy and the seesaw of political power, the constitution had survived intact.

As Clarissa tagged along with me on my job-hunt, she kept stopping and looking
around as though she'd lost something.

Finally she tugged on my hand as we waited at Piccadilly Circus tube station.
"Mummy, where did the eye-spies go?"

"Spy-eyes" I corrected automatically. Then I hoisted her up on my hip. "There
aren't any spy-eyes over here. No spy-eyes, no hovercars, and no tattoos."

I brushed her forehead gently. The day we'd flown in, I'd taken Clarissa to
Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital. The plasterwork was flaking from the
walls, and the medical facilities barely rose to X-ray machines, but the doctor
pretended to talk to Clarissa's rabbit while he examined her. And three hours
later, Clarissa had only a fading pink mark on her forehead. They hadn't even
charged me.

Clarissa had been remarkably patient during the job-hunt, but I'd noticed the
ears on her rabbit getting more and more ragged. Whenever I had to leave her,
she took the rabbit out and chewed on it. Sometimes a receptionist would try to
play with her, but Clarissa just chewed the rabbit in big-eyed silence until I
returned.

I finally found a job predicting rates of chemical contamination in the water
supply. On the morning before I was due to start, I took Clarissa to London Zoo.
After all the U.S. media reports of starvation caused by Britain's outdated
anti-technology stance, I was bemused that they were still keeping the Zoo open.
I hadn't seen any evidence of starvation in London itself, but I presumed the
situation was worse in other parts of the country, and a single elephant eats
enough to feed six families.

But the Zoo was not only open, it was the most crowded, most high-tech place I'd
seen since arriving. Children pressed their faces against the one-way walls of
the enclosures, watched holographic computer simulations explaining the animals'
diets and habitats and life cycles. A pool the size of two football stadiums
extended into Regent's Park, filled with eighty dolphins and a bewildering
assortment of fish.

Clarissa clutched my hand as we walked through a tunnel extending through the
middle of the pool, the blue-green water glowing all around us in the sunlight.
She let go of her rabbit for a moment to stare at a baby dolphin sliding up and
over the glass tunnel, its gray belly inches from her nose. Audio speakers
relayed its high-pitched squeaks, and Clarissa whistled back at it.

She pointed at the water. "Want to go play."

"I'm sorry, that's only for the dolphins. They'd be frightened if you joined
them."