"Suzette Haden Elgin - Communipaths" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

what will she do? The baby’s father died before it was born, and Anne-Charlotte had
promised him that she would save it, but surely she must have known she could not.
When they came for it, sending four Fedrobots for just one little baby girl, eleven
months old, Anne-Charlotte tried to kill it. I heard her, even though they tried to keep
me away, and she was screaming that she would kill the baby before she would let
them take it to the hell they had reserved for it. She lifted the baby high into the air to
dash it against the wall. But Patrick went very swiftly and he took the baby before
she could hurt it, and he handed it to the tall man who came with the Fedrobots, and
they were gone while I was still hearing what Anne-Charlotte had screamed.
But I was telling about Chrysanthemum Bridge. At eight points around the
common room there are doors, and leading from each door is a livingdome like the
big central common roomdome. It’s all made from the pale yellow clay of Iris, and
from the air it looks like a flower with eight petals. Patrick says that’s only an
accident, because if it were intentional it would be horribly “cute,” but it happens to
be the most practical way to build a Maklunite cluster. There are people living in
seven of our eight domes, and someday, if all of the children marry, we may have to
add a second ring of livingdomes around the outside. Then again, we might all move
away, though I can’t imagine living anywhere else myself.
They wanted Anne-Charlotte’s baby to man a Communipath station on the
Bucket. They were very stern with her about it. “That baby is a very valuable and
delicate piece of property,” they said, as if a human being could be property!
Patrick’s woman put her hands over my ears when the Fedrobot said that, but then
she laughed at herself and took her hands away. How am I to learn if she does things
like that? And so I heard it all. They have charged Anne-Charlotte with high treason
against humankind, because it is a very grave crime to have a baby alone like she did
and not allow it to be registered, particularly since she knew that it would have a high
Factor Q.
I don’t really understand about Factor Q. I should, but I can’t seem to make
myself be interested in what they tell me about biology and life science and all the
rest of it. I’m sure it would be good for me if I paid more attention, and perhaps I
will resolve to do that soon. But not yet, because I am too busy, and because there
are too many other things to learn.
But I know roughly how it goes, the Factor Q thing. Every baby, through all the
three known galaxies, must be registered at its birth and given a blood test by the
nearest government medical computer or inspector, whichever is closest. All those
babies who have a potential for above-normal telepathic development show Factor
Q in their blood at birth, and they are always taken from their parents immediately
and put in the Tri-Galactic Federation Creche on Mars. (I think it used to be on
Earth, but Earth is used only for agriculture now, and all the government offices are
on other planets.)
Anne-Charlotte knew her baby would have Factor Q, because both she and Drijn,
its father, had been raised in the Creche themselves and had had very high Q ratings.
Neither of them was released from candidacy for the Communipath network until
they were eleven, and that is very late. They decided, she and the baby’s father, that
they would not register the baby, that they would hide it and keep it, and in a way I
understand that, but it is a grave crime. If one woman is allowed to keep her baby,
then how can any woman be asked to give hers up? I can see that.
I can also see how, when Anne-Charlotte had only the baby to remind her of her
man, and he had died, she did not want to let them have the baby. The law about the
Bucket is a cruel law; if it did not have to exist, everyone in the Three Galaxies