"Nancy Kress - Maximum Light" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

had yet figured out the exact mechanism. They only knew the results. Cloning could not provide the infants
the world craved.
And so children were scarce and precious; they were not allowed to turn up half-naked and alone in the
middle of filthy streets. Especially not children with no visible birth defects. There were a great many
infertile couples who would kill for this little girl.
She looked up at me without fear, and put two fingers in her mouth.
"Hello," I said, through the powered-down window. Beside me, the driver drew his gun. Children as bait
were not unknown to the truly desperate. "What's your name?"
 "Rosaria," she said around the two fingers, and started to cry. I got out of the car.
"Why are you crying, Rosaria?"
"Abuela didn't dress me." She lifted the edge of her tunic to show me her naked legs and genitals.
Hastily I pushed the cloth back down again. If this got caught on robocam . . . HILL SCIENTIST
CAUGHT MOLESTING CHILD.
"Where's Abuela now, Rosaria?"
She pointed down a side street. The driver said, "Sir . . . I can call Child Protection. . ."
"Do that. And the cops." But meanwhile Rosaria was tugging on my hand and crying. "Rosaria, we
have to wait for some people to come before we find Abuela."
"Abuela fall on the floor!"
I was a doctor. I went with her.
She led me a short way down the nearest side street. SHARE RESPONSIBILITY advised the building
graffiti, along with FUCK RESPONSIBILITY! My driver stayed behind, talking on his wrister. I held the
child's small hand as we climbed filthy, crumbling steps, through an apartment-house door half off its hinges,
up a flight of stairs reeking of garlic and despair. The staircase wasn't equipped with even common
reinforced railings and non-skid treads, let alone the aid-summoning sensory monitors that were guardian
angels to the elderly rich. At the top of the stairs were three apartment doors, one wide open. Inside, an
elderly Hispanic woman lay on the clean floor, between two carefully darned chairs that had once been
bright red. One look at her and I knew I was too late. Myocardial infarction, or burst aneurysm, or any of a
dozen other causes of death common to the very old. In her hand she held Rosaria's pink tights.
I knelt before the child. "Rosaria . . . Abuela's dead. She's not in that body anymore. Do you
understand?"
She nodded, although of course she couldn't understand. But she had stopped crying. Her big dark eyes
were very soft, like the fur of black kittens. From behind the red chair she plucked a Grandma Ann doll, one
of the toys distributed as part of Project Patriot. The young must be taught early to embrace the old.
Rosaria clutched the doll tightly.
"Sweetheart, who else lives with—"
"Aaeeehhhaaaeeee!" A cry of anguish from a huge Hispanic woman hurtling through the door.
"Abuelita! Aaeeehhhaaaeee!"
I stood up and stepped back.
The woman, who looked in only her early twenties, collapsed beside her dead grandmother and began
wailing. She wore factory coveralls, stitched DONOVAN ELECTRONICS. After a few moments, I put a
hand on her shoulder. "Ma'am. . ."
To my surprise, she leapt up from the body and whirled on me.
"Who you? What you doing here?"
"I'm a doctor. I found Rosaria wandering in the street; she said her abuela had been dressing her. . ."
"In the street? You took her in the street?"
"No, I . . . she came out by herself. After your grandmother—great-grandmother?—collapsed, I
presume. I was—"
"You wasn't doing nothing! You hear me? We're just fine without no Child Protection!"
"I'm not from Child Protection. I—"
"You just leave us alone!"