"Edward L. Ferman - Best From F&SF, 23rd Edition" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ferman Edward L)

as the old, the body would not reject it тАФSurely that is the best possible application of cloning.


John Varley's first story for F&Sf was "Picnic on Nearside" in 1974. Since then, he has earned
a reputation as one of sfтАЩs most exciting new storytellers through such work as "Retrograde
Summer,тАЭ "The Black Hole Passes," "In the Bowl" (Best from F&SF, 22nd series) and his first
novel, Titan. This story was another Nebula award nominee.

In the Hall of the Martian Kings
JOHN VARLEY

It took perseverance, alertness, and a willingness to break the rules to watch the sunrise in Tharsis
Canyon. Matthew Crawford shivered in the dark, his suit heater turned to emergency setting, his eyes
trained toward the east. He knew he had to be watchful. Yesterday he had missed it entirely, snatched
away from him in the middle of a long, unavoidable yawn. His jaw muscles stretched, but he controlled it
and kept his eyes firmly open.
And there it was. Like the lights in a theater after the show is over: just a quick brightening, a splash
of localized bluish-purple over the canyon rim, and he was surrounded by footlights. Day had come, the
truncated Martian day that would never touch the blackness over his head.
This day, like the nine before it, illuminated a Tharsis radically changed from what it had been over
the last sleepy ten thousand years. Wind erosion of rocks can create an infinity of shapes, but it never
gets around to carving out a straight line or a perfect arc. The human encampment below him broke up
the jagged lines of the rocks with regular angles and curves.
The camp was anything but orderly. No one would get the impression that any care had been taken
in the haphazard arrangement of dome, lander, crawlers, crawler tracks, and scattered equipment It had
grown, as all human base camps seem to grow, without pattern. He was reminded of the footprints
around Tranquillity Base, though on a much larger scale.
Tharsis Base sat on a wide ledge about halfway up from the uneven bottom of the Tharsis arm of the
Great Rift Valley. The site had been chosen because it was a smooth area, allowing easy access up a
gentle slope to the flat plains of the Tharsis Plateau, while at the same time only a kilometer from the
valley floor. No one could agree which area was most worthy of study: plains or canyon. So this site had
been chosen as a compromise. What it meant was that the exploring parties had to either climb up or go
down, because there wasn't a damn thing worth seeing near the camp. Even the exposed layering and its
areological records could not be seen without a half-kilometer crawler ride up to the point where
Crawford had climbed to watch the sunrise.
He examined the dome as he walked back to camp. There was a figure hazily visible through the
plastic. At this distance he would have been unable to tell who it was if it weren't for the black face. He
saw her step up to the dome wall and wipe a clear circle to look through. She spotted his bright red suit
and pointed at him. She was suited except for her helmet, which contained her radio. He knew he was in
trouble. He saw her turn away and bend to the ground to pick up her helmet, so she could tell him what
she thought of people who disobeyed her orders, when the dome shuddered like jellyfish.
An alarm started in his helmet, flat and strangely soothing coming from the tiny speaker. He stood
there for a moment as a perfect smoke ring of dust billowed up around the rim of the dome. Then he was
running.
He watched the disaster unfold before his eyes, silent except for the rhythmic beat of the alarm bell in
his ears. The dome was dancing and straining, trying to fly. The floor heaved up in the center, throwing
the black woman to her knees. In another second the ulterior was a whirling snowstorm. He skidded on
the sand and fell forward, got up in time to see the fiberglass ropes on the side nearest him snap free from
the steel spikes anchoring the dome to the rock. The dome now looked like some fantastic Christmas
ornament, filled with snowflakes and the flashing red and blue lights of the emergency alarms. The top of