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

She took a step toward me. Her eyes blazed with hatred. She was as tall as I was, twenty pounds
heavier, and fifty years younger. I stepped back.
"I find somebody else to watch my Rosaria. You ain't going to take her away to give to some rich bitch
whose husband's balls empty and whose test-tube fucking don't take. Bad enough I got to work two jobs to
support you old white farts, you ain't getting my child too!"
"Ma'am, you are—" I was going to say, blocking my pathway to the door. I don't know what she
thought I was going to say. Her face suddenly crinkled horribly and she swung on me. Caught off balance, I
went down, wildly thrusting out my left hand to arrest my fall. My fingers slammed into the floor. I felt two
of them break.
Only one punch. She stood there, panting, horror at what she'd just done creeping slowly into her eyes,
while Rosaria wailed and neighbors boiled into the hall and the scream of police flyers approached outside.
We looked at each other across the din—of noise, of my hand, of her dead grandmother who was
Rosaria's sole caregiver, of her desperate fight to keep and care for her child from the affluent so hungry
for it. Affluent for the most part as white as the old people this woman subsidized with nearly fifty percent
of her paycheck. The essentially bankrupt government protected children, but did not fund day care. Kids
should be cared for by their families, was the national mood. That was the responsible way. And if families
couldn't, or wouldn't, care for their children—then give the kids to the rich white couples panting for them.
Still on the floor, I examined my fingers. Although I couldn't be sure without an X ray, I guessed they
were simple fractures. The siren stopped outside. I said softly, "Pick up Rosaria. And let me go tell the cops
everything is under control."
She did. Out of fear, or hope, or maybe just not knowing what else to do. She stepped aside and picked
up her daughter, who buried her head in her mother's neck and clung hard. I pushed past the scowling
neighbors to greet the police, letting my hand dangle casually as if nothing were wrong with it, planning how
to tell the cops there was a body here but no foul play. How to tell the Child Protection that, yes, Rosaria
had no one to raise her while her overworked, overtaxed mother put in six ten-hour factory shifts a week
because she needed the overtime—but that everything was under control, nothing here needed official
intervention.
Everything was just fine.




3
CAMERON ATULI
There are only forty-two people in the world, and I know all of them.
Nobody looks at me any differently as I hurry from the boys' wing through the corridors of Aldani
House, late again to morning class. "Say," Nathan calls, perky even at this hour, damn his beautiful eyes.
Melita nods formally: "Good morning, Cameron." Shoes in hand, I fly pass Yong and Belissa, who smile. I
might never have been away. I might never have had significant portions of my brain deliberately,
selectively, expensively walled away.
What was in those memories? You will ask yourself a thousand times, Dr. Newell told me, her gray
curls bobbing, and each time will be the first.
"Cameron," Rebecca, our ballet mistress, says severely as I rush to my place at the barre. "We would
have been thrilled to see you fifteen minutes ago."
"I'm sorry," I say, and resist the impulse to add, What do you expect of a delete brain? What
Rebecca expects is for everyone to be on time at her class, or at least everyone in the company who's
currently dancing. Thirty-one dancers. I take my place at the barre.
"Plié," Rebecca calls. "And one and two and . . ."
Thirty-one dancers, including the students in the Aldani School who are too young to join the company
officially. Plus Rebecca, Dr. Newell, my nurses Anna and Saul, Aldani House security technician Yong,