"Mary Rosenblum - Jumpers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rosenblum Mary)

"I succeeded." Joaquin looked up into his father's face. "You're too late, Father." Beside his knee, the
blue and scarlet frog twitched, crushed and dying. Joaquin scooped it up, cool and moist in his sweaty
palm. Surging to his feet, he grabbed his father's hand, and before he could jerk it away, he pressed the
frog's mangled body against it.

For an instant he was seeing himselfтАФyoung with a youth that couldn't be bought, with a world of
possibility that had not yet lost its wonder.

Then his father jerked his hand from Joaquin's, knocking the frog to the ground, grinding it into a smear of
guts and blue skin in the dust. "Disgusting." He wiped his hand on his pants, but he did not look at his
son.

"Hide-and-seek." Joaquin looked down at Silvano with pity. "I told you punishment rarely has to do with
money. I warned you." He reached behind Silvano, freed his bound hands, then picked up the container
full of engineered eggs, created from Zlia's DNA. "You'll be safe, I promise you." He pushed the
container into Silvano's lax hands. "Do you understand?" He addressed the guards. "If anything happens
to this man, we will punish you." He smiled at them both, watched their eyes flick from himself to his
father, then back to him, before they slid down and away and they nodded. "It won't matter who actually
did the harm," he said gently. "You are responsible." They tensed. They would protect Silvano with their
lives now.

Joaquin faced his father. "Let's go back. It's time I started to learn the business, isn't it?"

"About time, yes." His father smiled, but a hint of uncertainty showed in his eyes. "What about your
precious project? We'll have to submit your results to experts, you know, a juried journal perhaps."

No expert would verify these results, his father would see to that. That was the old game of
hide-and-seek. But he was finished playing. His father simply didn't realize it yet. "I'm leaving the
equipment here. You can sell it for scrap, Silvano." He looked down at the man, bent over Zlia's body,
pitying him, but feeling also тАж envy. You didn't know what you had, he thought. But you at least had it.
For a while. He wouldn't be lonely, anyway. He would have Zlia's sons and daughters to raise. Maybe
this time he'd understand. "Let's go, Father." He smiled at his father's wary bemusement. "I have a lot to
catch up on."
"Oh, I agree," his father smiled. But the uncertainty in his eyes sharpened a hair.

Silvano had scooped Zlia's body into his arms, stood unsteadily, tears gleaming on his battered face, the
eggs in their container balanced on Zlia's flat abdomen, above her womb.

You can't run away from yourself. There is no escape in that direction. For an instant, Silvano met
Joaquin's eyes. Then he lowered his head and limped across the scorched clay, back to the shadows of
his world. Zlia had understood, Joaquin thought. You simply make your own rules. You simply fly. Like
the jumpers. Not escaping anything тАж just not part of this universe.

"Let's go," he said and turned toward his father's vehicle.

Without a word, his father followed him.
The End