"Judith Merril - Out of Bounds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merril Judith)

mention these things, but are you certain the doctor was right? Hank's been around all that uranium or
thorium or whatever it is all these years, and I know you say he's a designer, not a technician, and he
doesn't get near anything that might be dangerous, but you know he used to, back at Oak Ridge. Don't
you think, of course, I'm just being a foolish old woman, and I don't want you to get upset. You know
much more about it than I do, and I'm sure your doctor was right. He should know…"
Margaret made a face over the excellent coffee, and caught herself refolding the paper to the
medical news.
Stop it, Maggie, stop it! The radiologist said Hank's job couldn't have exposed him. And the
bombed area we drove past…No, no. Stop it, now! Read the social notes or the recipes, Maggie
girl.
A well-known geneticist, in the medical news, said that it was possible to tell with absolute
certainty, at five months, whether the child would be normal, or at least whether the mutation was likely
to produce anything freakish. The worst cases, at any rate, could be prevented. Minor mutations, of
course, displacements in facial features, or changes in brain structure could not be detected. And there
had been some cases recently, of normal embryos with atrophied limbs that did not develop beyond
the seventh or eighth month. But, the doctor concluded cheerfully, the worst cases could now be
predicted and prevented.
"Predicted and prevented." We predicted it, didn't we? Hank and the others, they predicted
it. But we didn't prevent it. We could have stopped if in '46 and '47. Now…
Margaret decided against the breakfast. Coffee had been enough for her in the morning for ten
years; it would have to do for today. She buttoned herself into interminable folds of material that, the
salesgirl had assured her, was the only comfortable thing to wear during the last few months. With a
surge of pure pleasure, the letter and newspaper forgotten, she realized she was on the next to the last
button. It wouldn't be long now.
The city in the early morning had always been a special kind of excitement for her. Last night it had
rained, and the sidewalks were still damp-gray instead of dusty. The air smelled the fresher, to a
city-bred woman, for the occasional pungency of acrid factory smoke. She walked the six blocks to
work, watching the lights go out in the all-night hamburger joints, where the plate-glass walls were
already catching the sun, and the lights go on in the dim interiors of cigar stores and dry-cleaning
establishments.
The office was in a new Government building. In the rolovator, on the way up, she felt, as always,
like a frankfurter roll in the ascending half of an old-style rotary toasting machine. She abandoned the
air-foam cushioning gratefully at the fourteenth floor, and settled down behind her desk, at the rear of a
long row of identical desks.
Each morning the pile of papers that greeted her was a little higher. These were, as everyone knew,
the decisive months. The war might be won or lost on these calculations as well as any others. The
manpower office had switched her here when her old expeditor's job got to be too strenuous. The
computer was easy to operate, and the work was absorbing, if not as exciting as the old job. But you
didn't just stop working these days. Everyone who' could do anything at all was needed.
And—she remembered the interview with the psychologist—I'm probably the unstable type.
Wonder what sort of neurosis I'd get sitting home reading that sensational paper…
She plunged into the work without pursuing the thought.
February 18
Hank darling,
Just a note—from the hospital, no less. I had a dizzy spell at work, and the doctor took it to heart.
Blessed if I know what I'll do with myself lying in bed for weeks, just waiting—but Dr. Boyer seems to
think it may not be so long.
There are too many newspapers around here. More infanticides all the time, and they can't seem to
get a jury to convict any of them. It's the fathers who do it. Lucky thing you're not around, in case—
Oh, darling, that wasn't a very funny joke, was it? Write as often as you can, will you? I have too