"Ken Rand - The Henry and the Martha" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rand Ken)

We would be disposed, A-nan and I, or transferred if lucky.

We both stood with our backs to the bed and the bathroom door, as if not
seeing would make it go away.

Waiting to connect—the storm must have affected the comlink—I scratched
the webbing under my inner thumbs, a habit. A-nan touched me on the elbow.
“You’ll get a rash,” she used to say when we first joined. Now she just touches me
and I stop.

I smiled—what are mates for?—but the smile did not reach my mouth plate,
dry now. The Henry and the Martha were mates too—had been mates, like us.

“We will be disposed.” A-nan put our thoughts into words, an attempt to dull
their eventual impact.

“The Director himself will be disposed,” I said. Maybe it helped.

The Director came on first. Even as his tinny voice echoed in my inner ear,
medical joined in. My report was clinical, brief, accurate. I held nothing back, and
when I finished, A-nan nodded to me, confirming I’d spoken true.

Medical dispatched a team, the Director went off line for a moment to speak
with patron relations, to get out a story about the delay “due to effects of the storm.”

Two meds bustled in, I didn’t know their names, smelling of antiseptic and
pouch polish, carrying crisis satchels. We stepped aside but didn’t leave. Where
would we go?

Crisp and efficient in starched uniforms, they went to work on the humans.
One looked at the Martha, the other knelt by the still Henry. They wore filters. They
probed and poked, tested, examined, monitored scans, recorded data. The only
sound was the electronic click and chatter and rubbery hiss and sigh of their
equipment, listening, recording, testing.

The Director came back on. “I bought an hour, but the media’s on it and
patrons are complaining. Do whatever—”

“Pardon, Director,” one medical said. “We must talk, secure.”

I unjacked and stepped out of the bedroom into the living room. A-nan joined
me and we stood looking out at the same view through the display window the
humans had looked out at gawking patrons for years. I suddenly wondered how old
they were. I didn’t know. Did A-nan?

Before I could ask, one of the medicals approached. “We must remove the
humans,” he said.

“Remove?” I said. “I don’t—”