"Connie Willis - Even The Queen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Willis Connie)

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EVEN THE QUEEN

Connie Willis

The phone sang as I was looking over the defense's motion to dismiss. "It's the universal ring," my law
clerk Bysshe said, reaching for it. "It's probably the defendant. They don't let you use signatures from
jail."
"No, it's not," I said. "It's my mother."
"Oh." Bysshe reached for the receiver. "Why isn't she using her signature?"
"Because she knows I don't want to talk to her. She must have found out what Perdita's done."
"Your daughter Perdita?" he asked, holding the receiver against his chest. "The one with the little girl?"
"No, that's Viola. Perdita's my younger daughter. The one with no sense."
"What's she done?"
"She's joined the Cyclists."
Bysshe looked enquiringly blank, but I was not in the mood to enlighten him. Or in the mood to talk to
Mother. "I know exactly what Mother will say. She'll ask me why I didn't tell her, and then she'll
demand to know what I'm going to do about it, and there is nothing I can do about it, or I obviously
would have done it already."
Bysshe looked bewildered. "Do you want me to tell her you're in court?"
"No." I reached for the receiver. "I'll have to talk to her sooner or later." I took it from him. "Hello,
Mother," I said.
"Traci," Mother said dramatically, "Perdita has become a Cyclist."
"I know."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I thought Perdita should tell you herself."
"Perdita!" She snorted. "She wouldn't tell me. She knows what I'd have to say about it. I suppose you
told Karen."
"Karen's not here. She's in Iraq." The only good thing about this whole debacle was that thanks to Iraq's
eagerness to show it was a responsible world community member and its previous penchant for self-
destruction, my mother-in-law was in the one place on the planet where the phone service was bad
enough that I could claim I'd tried to call her but couldn't get through, and she'd have to believe me.
The Liberation has freed us from all sorts of indignities and scourges, including Iraq's Saddams, but
mothers-in-law aren't one of them, and I was almost happy with Perdita for her excellent timing. When I
didn't want to kill her.
"What's Karen doing in Iraq?" Mother asked.
"Negotiating a Palestinian homeland."
"And meanwhile her granddaughter is ruining her life," she said irrelevantly. "Did you tell Viola?
"I told you, Mother. I thought Perdita should tell all of you herself."
"Well, she didn't. And this morning one of my patients, Carol Chen, called me and demanded to know
what I was keeping from her. I had no idea what she was talking about."
"How did Carol Chen find out?"
"From her daughter, who almost joined the Cyclists last year. Her family talked her out of it," she said

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