"Nancy Kress - Dancing on Air" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

"Who the fuck cares," Caroline says.
I am a dog.
I must love Caroline.
2.
Two days after the second ballerina was murdered, Michael Chow, senior editor
of _New York Now_ and my boss, called me into his office. I already knew what
he wanted, and I already knew I didn't want to do it. He knew that, too. We
both knew it wouldn't make any difference.
"You're the logical reporter, Susan," Michael said. He sat behind his
desk, always a bad sign. When he thought I'd want an assignment, he leaned
casually against the front of the desk. Its top was cluttered with print-outs;
with disposable research cartridges, some with their screens alight; with
pictures of Michael's six children. _Six_. They all looked like Michael:
straight black hair and a smooth face like a peeled egg. At the apex of the
mess sat a hardcopy of the _Times_ 3:00 p.m. on-line lead: AUTOPSY DISCOVERS
BIOENHANCERS IN CITY BALLET DANCER. "You have an in. Even Anton Privitera will
talk to you."
"Not about this. He already gave his press conference. Such as it was."
"So? You can get to him as a parent and leverage from there."
My daughter Deborah was a student in the School of American Ballet, the
juvenile province of Anton Privitera's kingdom. For thirty years he had ruled
the New York City Ballet like an annointed tyrant. Sometimes it seemed he
could even levy taxes and raise armies, so exalted was his reputation in the
dance world, and so good was his business manager John Cole at raising funds
and enlisting corporate patrons. Dancers had flocked to the City Ballet from
Europe, from Asia, from South America, from the serious ballet schools in the
patrolled zones of America's dying cities. Until biohancers, the New York City
Ballet had been the undisputed grail of the international dance world.
Now, of course, that was changing.
Privitera was dynamic with the press as long as we were content with
what he wished us to know. He wasn't going to want to discuss the murder of
two dancers, one of them his own.
A month ago Nicole Heyer, a principal dancer with the American Ballet
Theater, had been found strangled in Central Park. Three days ago the body of
Jennifer Lang had been found in her modest apartment. Heyer had been a
bioenhanced dancer who had come to the ABT from the Stuttgart Ballet. Lang, a
minor soloist with the City Ballet, had of course been natural. Or so
everybody thought until the autopsy. The entire company had been bioscanned
only three weeks ago, Artistic Director Privitera had told the press, but
apparently these particular viro-enhancers were so new and so different that
they hadn't even shown up on the scan.
I wondered how to make Michael understand the depth of my dislike for
all this.
"Don't cover the usual police stuff," Michael said, "nor the scientific
stuff on bioenhancement. Concentrate on the human angle you do so well. What's
the effect of these murders on the other dancers? Has it affected their
dancing? Does Privitera seemed more confirmed in his company policy now, or
has this shaken him enough to consider a change? What's he doing to protect
his dancers? How do the parents feel about the youngsters in the ballet
school? Are they withdrawing them until the killer is caught?"