"Kathleen Ann Goonan - The Bones of Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goose Mother)

bench, feeling sick. Later that afternoon she’d filed a complaint with
the board that regulated genetic engineering, but she heard
amusement in the voice of the man who took it.
That night, she’d tracked down the so-called Happy Child strand.
Carried by a benign virus as was most bionan, it stimulated the
endocrine system to produce soothing hormones when subtle
markers of rage and rebellion appeared in the blood.
No, Lynn thought, staring at the screen, flooded with despair,
think I’ll have regular kids, thanks all the same. She had a feeling
that those inconvenient tantrums they were wiping out were
necessary for the child to become separate from the parent, to learn
about power and limits. And that was just on the surface. What
other essential function might they serve, and how would the adults
who had not experienced it be crippled later? Intellectually?
Emotionally? Who could tell, now: no one, till they graduated from
Happy Kid Preschool and, later, Happy Kid High School…
Down the hall Nana shut her bedroom door, bringing Lynn back
to the present. She didn’t have to defend Masa’s genetic and
developmental integrity now.
 She stood, bent backward until her spine cracked, and stretched.
She leaned on the windowsill and looked out over Nana’s precise,
tiny lawn, where no plant dared put out a single untoward leaf to
disturb the otherworldly order. If they did, Nana was there with
clippers instantly, frowning and snipping.
The dark branch of a plumeria tree slanted past Lynn’s window,
blossoms white in moonlight. Maybe she would climb up on the roof
and look through her telescope for a few hours. She knew that she
wouldn’t be able to sleep. It might be a good night to digiscan the
fitful progress of the generation ship, moving toward swift
completion after a two-year hiatus with a new infusion of money
from Korea. She had been at the ever-so-elegant party at her father’s
estate when Samuel, James’s twin, finally finessed a firm promise
from the Korean ambassador after laying the groundwork for a
year. It was good that the moonbase was being used again for larger
goals than pleasure jaunts.
She turned from the window. She didn’t care about that right
now. Silly to pretend that she cared about much of anything. She
had rejected the hormone implant advised at the hospital, where the
tech told her that it would take a while for her hormones to
rebalance. She knew how to rebalance them. Running could cure
anything. No matter what Nana left unspoken, Lynn knew that
running hadn’t caused her miscarriage. She had been sick that
morning at the zendo, sick in a different way.
*
Well. So? It would have happened anyway. Something must have
been wrong with little Masa. Or her. She had blithely disregarded
her tech’s suggestion of various tests. Everything would be fine.
Blind faith. Which was now revealed as stupidity.
Restless, she felt like running right now, stepping out into the
streets and moving, but didn’t dare. Downtown Honolulu was