"Thomas Easton - Organic Future 03 - Woodsman" - читать интересную книгу автора (Easton Thomas A)

allies who happened to be, or ever to have been, "contaminated."

Would they ever be in power? Sam prayed that they would not, but their
numbers, the numbers of their sympathizers, the volume of their protests and
demands, the influence they exerted on governments and courts and media, all
grew year by year. He feared...



The school was much as schools had been for centuries: a housing for
hallways linking rooms full of chalkboards, books, desks, and young people,
walls hidden behind lockers and posters and trophy cases and displays of
student art. There were computers too, enough for all the students although,
as if in obedience to educational tradition, the technology was a little out
of date: inset in the surface of each desktop was an electronic screen and
keyboard from long before the days of the gengineering revolution.

Sam Nickers looked out over his class of eighth-graders. Forty faces of
all the shades of human skin--no green like his, but black, brown, tan, pink,
red, and yellow--stared back at him, eyes bouncing between his face and the
clock on the wall behind him. He checked his screen; everyone had finished. He
moved his mouse-gloved hand, clicked the button set on the side of his index
finger, and the machine graded the quiz and displayed each student's score,
both on his and on the individual student's screen. There were smiles, groans,
shrugs, another mass glance at the clock.

A buzzer echoed in the hall. He too shrugged. "Class dismissed."

The room promptly emptied, and silence fell. He was putting papers into
his briefcase when the speaker on the wall grated, "Mr. Nickers?" He faced the
little box, feeling just as he always had, ever since he had been a kid in
school himself, and the squawk of the annunciator had meant that some mischief
of his had been found out. "Yes?"

"Would you stop by the principal's office before you leave?"

"Of course," he said. "I'll be just a minute."

"Thank you." A click confirmed that the conversation was over. What, he
wondered, had it been about? What could the principal have to say to him? He
didn't think it could have anything to do with his work, for his evaluations
were good. They always had been. Still, he could not help but worry. The worry
only increased when he met Sheila in the hall outside the school's office. She
taught another grade, another subject. What could the principal possibly have
to say to both of them?

The answer was not long in coming.
 When Sam and Sheila stepped into the office, they found the door that
normally bore on its closed face the sign, "Lillian Bojemoy, Principal,"
standing open. The principal herself, a short, grey-haired woman who wore a