"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Chimera" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

Moya picked up the pistol and turned it over in her hands. "Do you know what
chimera originally meant?"

"No," Gen said.

"In Greek mythology, it was a fire-breathing monster with a lion's head, a
goat's body, and a serpent's tail. That was probably how those first
biogenetic engineers started calling the hybrids we experiment with chimera.
But when I started work with chimera my second year at Oregon State, I asked
my computer what the term meant." She paused, and met Gen's gaze. "The
definition I got was 'grotesque monster.' "

Gen waited. She wasn't sure how this related to Cedric's night terrors.

"Grotesque monster." Moya shook her head. "Sometimes I would look at Cedric
and the other animals I worked with, and I would wonder which one of us were
the real monsters. I think of some of the things I did—still do—and I realize
I don't want to know."

"Anna thinks I shouldn't keep him. She believes I shouldn't have taken him in
the first place."

"Anna's a kind-hearted woman who has seen a lot of pain and death." Moya
pushed her chair back. It squealed against the concrete floor. "She tries to
heal people and chimera. What she doesn't realize is how damage really works.
Let's take you, for example. Those famous legs of yours are as good as they've
always been, despite the destruction the car did to them."

Gen sat very still. Her legs tingled at the mention. She clenched her fists,
dropping them to her side.

"But they're not the same legs you had before. No damage remains, but your
legs are changed. They may be genetically similar, they might even be regrown
legs from your DNA, but they are not the legs you were born with, and never
will be again. All that exercise, all that muscle training, it's gone. Your
legs are different, and there's nothing you can do about that."

Moya glanced at Gen's clenched hands, then back at Gen's eyes. Gen had frozen
in her seat, like Cedric did when she made the darkness disappear.

"Healing is not the process of returning things to the way they were before.
It's the acceptance of things the way they are now." Moya smiled ruefully.
"Sometimes I think that's the biggest problem we created with our work. We
created an expectation that everything will remain the same. It never does. No
matter how much we want it to. It never does."