"Walter M. Miller - The Best of Walter M. Miller" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

plans. Unpredictability factors associated with mothers of genetic analogs. Withdraw con-tacts.
Servo Six.
 The Will

THE WILL OF a child. A child who played in the sun and ran over the meadow to chase with his dog
among the trees beyond the hedge, and knew the fierce passions of childhood. A child whose logic cut
corners and sought shortest distances, and found them. A child who made shining life in my house.
Red blood count low, wildly fluctuating . . . Chronic fatigue, loss of weight, general lethargy of
function . Noticeable pallor and muscular atrophy . . . the first symptoms.
That was eight months ago.
Last summer, the specialists conferred over him. When they had finished, I went to Doc Jules'
office-alone, because I was afraid it was going to be bad, and Cleo couldn't take it. He gave it to me
straight.
We can't cure him, Rod. We can only treat symptoms тАФand hope the research labs come through.
"


I'm sorry."
He'll die?"
"


"Unless the labs get an answer."
How long?"
"


"Months." He gave it to me bluntlyтАФmaybe because he thought I was hard enough to take it, and
maybe because he knew I was only Kenny's foster father, as if blood-kinship would have made it any
worse.
"Thanks for letting me know," I said, and got my hat. I would have to tell Cleo, somehow. It was
going to be tough. I left the building and went out to buy a paper.
A magazine on the science rack caught my eye. It had an
article entitled Carcinogenesis and Carbon-14 and there was a mention of leukemia in the blurb. I
bought it along with the paper, and went over to the park to read. Anything to keep from carrying the
news to Cleo.
The research article made things worse. They were still doing things to rats and cosmic rays, and the
word "cure" wasn't mentioned once. I dropped the magazine on the grass and glanced at the front page.
A small headline toward the bottom of the page said: COMMUNITY PRAYS THREE DAYS FOR
DYING CHILD. Same old sob-stuffтАФpublicity causes country to focus on some luckless incurable, and
deluge the family with sympathy, advice, money, and sincere and ardent pleas for divine intervention.
I wondered if it would be like that for KennyтАФand instinctively I shuddered.
I took a train out to the suburbs, picked up the car, and drove home before twilight. I parked in front,
because Cleo was out in back, taking down clothes from the line. The blinds were down in the living
room, and the lantern-jawed visage of Captain Chronos looked out sternly from the television screen.
The Captain carried an LTR (local--time-reversal) gun at the ready, and peered warily from side to side
through an oval hole in the title film. Kenny's usual early-evening fodder.

"Travel through the centuries with the master of the clock!" the announcer was chanting.
"Hi, kid," I said to the hunched-up figure who sat before the set, worshiping his hero.