"Walter M. Miller - Conditionally Human" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Walter M)

aptitudes and pick common labor, but that's all the law allows, and common laborers don't h
families. So I go where they need my aptitudes."
"You've got aptitudes for killing kids?" she asked sweetly. He groaned, clenched his eyes clos
shook his head fiercely as if to clear it of a sudden ache. His voice went desperately pa-tient. "T
assigned me to the job because I like babies. And because I have a degree in biology and
aptitude for dealing with people. Understand? Destroying unclaimed units is the smallest part o
Honey, before the evolvotron, before anybody ever heard of Anthropos Incorporated, people u
to elect animal catchers. Dogcatchers, they called them. Didn't have mutant dogs, of course.
just think of it that way—I'm a dog-catcher."
Ice-green eyes turned slowly to meet his gaze. Her face was delicately cut from cold marble. O
corner of her mouth twitched contempt at him. Her head turned casually away again to stare out
window toward the kennels again.
He backed to the door, plucked nervously at a splinter on the woodwork, watched her hopefu
for a moment.
"Well, gotta go. Work to do."
She looked at him again as if he were a specimen. "Do you need to be kissed?"
He ripped the splinter loose, gulped, "See you tonight," and stumbled toward the front of
house. The honeymoon indeed was done for District Inspector Norris of the Federal Biolog
Authority.
Anne heard his footsteps on the porch, heard the sudden grumble of the kennel-truck's turbin
choked on a sob and darted for the door, but the truck had backed into the street, lurched sudde
away with angry acceleration toward the highway that lay to the east. She stood blinking into the
morning sunlight, shoulders slumped. Things were wrong with the world, she decided.
A bell rang somewhere, rang again. She started slightly, shook herself, went to answer
telephone. A carefully enunciated voice that sounded chubby and professional called for Inspec
Norris. She told it disconsolately that he was gone.
"
Gone? Oh, you mean to work. Heh heh. Can this be the new Mrs. Norris?" The voice was
hearty and greasy, she thought, muttered affirmatively.
"Ah, yes. Norris spoke of you, my dear. This is Doctor Georges. I have a very urgent probl
to discuss with your husband. But perhaps I can talk to you. "
"You can probably get him on the highway. There's a phone in the truck." What sort of urg
problems could doctors discuss with dogcatchers, she wondered.
"Afraid not, my dear. The inspector doesn't switch on his phone until office hours. I know
well, you see."
"Can 't you wait?"
"It 's really an emergency, Mrs. Norris. I need an animal from the pound—a Chimp-K-48
preferably a five year old."
"I know nothing about my husband's business," she said stiffly. "You'll have to talk to him."
"Now see here, Mrs. Norris, this is an emergency, and I have to have ...”
"What would you do if I hadn't answered the phone?" she interrupted.
"Why I—I would have—"
"Then do it," she snapped, dropped the phone in its cradle, marched angrily away. The ph
began ringing again. She paused to glance back at it with a twinge of guilt. Emergency, the fat vo
had said. But what sort of emergency would in-volve a chimp K-48, and what would Georges
with the ani-mal? Butchery, she suspected, was somehow implied. She let the phone ring. If No
ever, ever, ever asked her to share his work in any way, she'd leave him, she told herself.

The truck whirred slowly along the suburban street that wound among nestled groups of pa
plasticoid cottages set approximately two to an acre on the lightly wooded land. With its populat