"Connie Willis - Bellweather" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

Flip is my punishment for having tried to get her predecessor, Desiderata, fired. Desiderata was mindless, clueless
completely without initiative. She misdelivered the mail, wrote down messages wrong, and spent all her free time examin
her split ends. After two months and a wrong phone call that cost me a government grant, I went to Management and
demanded she be fired and somebody, anybody else be hired, on the grounds that nobody could possibly be worse tha
Desiderata. I was wrong.

Management moved Desiderata to Supply (nobody ever gets fired at HiTek except scientists and even we don't g
pink slips. Our projects just get canceled for lack of funding) and hired Flip, who has a nose ring, a tattoo of a snowy ow
and the habit of sighing and rolling her eyes when you ask her to do anything at all. I am afraid to get her fired. There is n
telling who they might hire next.

Flip sighed loudly. "This package is really heavy."

"Then set it down," I said, stretching to reach the tape. It was just out of reach. I inched the hand holding the side
box shut higher and leaned farther across the lab table. My fingertips just touched the tape.

"It's breakable," Flip said, coming over to me, and dropped the box. I grabbed to catch it with both hands. It thun
down on the table, the side gave way on my box, and the clippings poured out of the box and across the floor.

"Next time you're going to have to pick it up yourself," Flip said, walking on the clippings toward the door.

I shook the box, listening for broken sounds. There weren't any, and when I looked at the top, it didn't say FRAG
anywhere. It said PERISHABLE. It also said DR. ALICIA TURNBULL.

"This isn't mine," I said, but Flip was already out the door. I waded through a sea of clippings and called to her. "T
isn't my package. It's for Dr. Turnbull in Bio."

She sighed.

"You need to take this to Dr. Turnbull."

She rolled her eyes. "I have to deliver the rest of the interdepartmental mail first," she said, tossing her hank of ha
She slouched on down the hall, dropping two pieces of said departmental mail as she went.

"Make sure you come back and get it as soon as you're done with the mail," I shouted after her down the hall. "It'
perishable," I shouted, and then, remembering that illiteracy is a hot trend these days and perishable is a four-syllable w
"That means it'll spoil."

Her shaved head didn't even turn, but one of the doors halfway down the hall opened, and Gina leaned out. "Wha
she do now?" she asked.

"Duct tape now qualifies as a personal errand," I said.

Gina came down the hall. "Did you get one of these?" she said, handing me a blue flyer. It was a meeting
announcement. Wednesday. Cafeteria. All HiTek staff, including R&D. "Flip was supposed to deliver one to every offic
she said.

"What's the meeting about?"