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

Someone who can pay for a child who will be perfect. A child she wants to share with Bryan who will,
by then, be gone.

“It's all about chances,” she says. “Risk. Maybe we should just do it the old-fashioned way. Our parents
did."

He nods, but doesn't look at her. She flushes. Suddenly she realizes how he read the report. The failures
are not his. They are hers. The way her body combines with his will produce a result he will be ashamed
of. Whenever he looks in his child's brown eyes, he will always see this report. 47 percent chance of IQ
above 120. And if the child is not as intelligent as Bryan wants, he will blame her.

He will always blame her.

No matter how many museums she goes to, or how often their child smiles. No matter how much simple
joy that young life will bring them, Bryan will always see the failure.

He gets up, kisses her on her crown where she—and all the people she has descended from—have a full
 shock of hair, and makes his way through the crowd.

She sits on their bench, knowing now what the symmetry he sought was. It is over. Sure, they will divide
possessions, figure out who inherits the apartment, maybe even sleep together for old times sake. But the
future, the bright shining future, is gone.

She sits on the bench for the rest of the hour, watching the children, searching for their parents. Women
sit on other benches, occasionally look toward the playing children, smile, and continue their
conversations. The smiles are warm ones, contented ones, as if the children's high spirits are infectious.

What would their results have looked like? 98 percent chance of brown hair? 75 percent chance of gray
eyes?

Nowhere on that form was an area for percentage chance of bringing joy. Nowhere was there a space
for all the years of laughter, now denied.

She has choices of her own to make. All of them involving risk. All of them involving a world that has
changed even beyond her understanding.

This morning she thought it irresponsible to have a child without knowing the risks. But she hadn't known
the greatest risk of all. The risk of believing the statistics, reading too much into the numbers.

Perfection is not possible.

Would Bryan have been satisfied with a 53 percent chance of an IQ above 120? She never thought to
ask.

Until an hour ago, she hadn't even known the answer for herself.