"Janet Kagan - Mirabile" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kagan Janet)

stabilize a herd of Guernseys—which left me and Mike to throw a containment tent
around the Ribeiro place while we did the gene-reads on the roaches and the
daffodils that spawned ’em. Dragon’s Teeth, sure enough, and worse than useless. I
grabbed my gear and went in to clean them out, daffodils and all.
By the time I crawled back out of the containment tent, exhausted, cranky, and
thoroughly bitten, there wasn’t a daffodil left in town. Damn fools. If I’d told ’em
the roaches were Earth-authentic they’d have cheered ’em, no matter how obnoxious
they were.
I didn’t even have the good grace to say hi to Mike when I slammed into the lab.
The first thing out of my mouth was, “The red daffodils—in front of Sagdeev’s.”
“I got ’em,” he said. “Nick of time, but I got ’em. They’re in the greenhouse—”
We’d done a gene-read on that particular patch of daffodils the first year they’d
flowered red: they promised to produce a good strain of praying mantises, probably
Earth-authentic. We both knew how badly Mirabile needed insectivores. The other
possibility was something harmless but pretty that ships’ records called “fireflies.”
Either would have been welcome, and those idiots had been ready to consign both
to a fire.
“I used the same soil, Annie, so don’t give me that look.”
“Town’s full of fools,” I growled, to let him know that look wasn’t aimed at him.
“Same soil, fine, but can we match the rest of the environmental conditions those
praying mantises need in the goddamn greenhouse?”
“It’s the best we’ve got,” he said. He shrugged and his right hand came up
bandaged. I glared at it.
He dropped the bandaged hand behind the lab bench. “They were gonna burn
’em. I couldn’t—” He looked away, looked back. “Annie, it’s nothing to worry
about—”
I’d have done the same myself, true, but that was no reason to let him get into the
habit of taking fool risks.
I started across to check out his hand and give him pure hell from close up.
Halfway there the com blatted for attention. Yellow light on the console, meaning it
was no emergency, but I snatched it up to deal with the interruption before I dealt
with Mike. I snapped a “Yeah?” at the screen.
“Mama Jason?”
Nobody calls me that but Elly’s kids. I glowered at the face on screen: my age,
third-generation Mirabilan, and not so privileged. “Annie Jason Masmajean,” I
corrected, “Who wants to know?”
“Leonov Bellmaker Denness at this end,” he said. “I apologize for my improper
use of your nickname.” Ship’s manners—he ignored my rudeness completely.
The name struck me as vaguely familiar but I was in no mood to search my
memory; I’d lost my ship’s manners about three hours into the cockroach clean-out.
“State your business,” I said.
To his credit, he did: “Two of Elly’s lodgers claim there’s a monster in Loch
Moose. By their description, it’s a humdinger.”
I was all ears now. Elly runs the lodge at Loch Moose for fun—her profession’s
raising kids. (Elly Raiser Roget, like her father before her. Our population is still so
small we can’t afford to lose genes just because somebody’s not suited, one way or
another, for parenting.) A chimera anywhere near Loch Moose was a potential
disaster. Thing of it was, Denness didn’t sound right for that. “Then why aren’t they
making this call?”
He gave a deep-throated chuckle. “They’re in the dining room gorging themselves