"Nancy Kress - The Rules" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kress Nancy)

THE RULES
by Nancy Kress

The author’s forthcoming books include an SF novel from Tor, Steal
Across the Sky; a bio-thriller, Dogs, from Tachyon Publications; and a
collection Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories, from Golden
Gryphon Press. In her latest tale for Asimov’s, Nancy takes a grim look at
what it takes to follow...

****

Carmody surveyed the house clinging to the side of a steep hill and
surrounded by three hundred acres of the haunting gold-green of a New
England spring. A modest enough house, considering the owner. Vaguely
rustic but not pushing the point. The weather vane on the top was a nice
satiric touch. Which way is the wind blowing for you now, you old
reprobate?

He walked the last of the driveway by himself, over the strenuous
objections of his bodyguard. By the time he reached the portico, all of his
electronics had ceased working. The door opened before he could push
the bell. Somehow, Carmody wasn’t surprised to see Tartell himself on the
other side.

Tartell sat in an elaborate powerchair with neck braces. In his wasted
hands trembled the house remote. The second Carmody stepped inside,
saw the layout, and smelled the air, he realized his mistake. This wasn’t a
rustic home, no matter what it looked like from the outside. Nor was it the
secret command headquarters he’d expected. This was a hospital, and
Tartell was finally dying.

“Hello, Arthur,” Tartell said. “I’ve been expecting you.”

****

It had begun five days earlier, on Monday evening. In Cleveland,
Ohio, Ron DiSarto finished his dinner of Soy Surprise, kissed his wife on
the top of her head as she fed the baby in the bunny-patterned high chair,
and went through to the living room.

“This is NBC News live from New York, with Tanya Jones—” Tanya
Jones, smiling professionally, vanished.
 “What the...” DiSarto said. For a long moment his TV filled with snow.
Then a picture burst into view, a village of wood-and-mud huts in a bare,
sere landscape. A voice-over said urgently, “This is Nakmu, in Kenya, and
this is Saya.” Close-up of a one-armed child with a heartbreaking smile.
“Saya was mutilated by the band of robbers who burned down her hut and
killed her parents.”

DiSarto frowned. Okay, it was a human interest story, or maybe a