"Kim Stanley Robinson - Icehenge" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

disorders... seeing patterns is easy in such a heavily patterned environment.
So I began to discount it all. Perhaps we were carrying something to Ceres for the
Committee, but that was nothing.
Still, there was something about the atmosphere of the ship in those days. More people
than usual were jumpy and strained. There were mysterious glances exchanged... in an
atmosphere of mystery. But here hindsight may be influencing me. The facts are what I
want here. This record will help me to remember these events many years, perhaps
centuries, from now, and so I must set down the facts, the sharpest spur to the memory.
In any case, the third sign was unmistakable. By this time the sun was nearly between
us and Mars, and I went to the radio room to get a last letter off to my fool of a father, in
jail temporarily for his loud mouth. Afterwards, I went to the jump tube, and was about to
fall down to the living quarters when I heard voices floating down the tube from the
bridge. Had that been my name? I pulled myself up the rail to the steps that led to the
bridge, and stayed there, eavesdropping again. A habit of mine. Once more, John Dancer
was speaking.
"Emma Weil is pro-Committee all the way," he said as if arguing the point.
"Even so," said another man, and a couple of voices cut over so that I didn't hear what
he said.
"No," Dancer said, interrupting the other voices quickly. "Weil is probably the most
important person aboard this ship. We can't talk to her about any of this until Swann says
so, and that won't be until after the rendezvous. So you can forget it."
That did it. When it was clear the conversation was over I hopped back to the jump
tube and fell down it, aiding the faint acceleration-gravity with some pulls on the rail. I
ticked off in my mind the places Swann would most likely be at that hour, intent on
finding him and having a long talk. It is not healthy to believe yourself the focus of a
ship-wide conspiracy.

I had known Eric Swann for a long time.
Before the turn of the century, every sector ran its own mining expeditions. Royal
Dutch looked for carbonaceous chondrite; Mobil was after the basaltic chondrites in the
dud belt; Texas mined the silicate types. Chevron had the project of pulling one of the
Amors into a Martian orbit, to make another moon. (This became the moon Amor, which
was turned into a detention center. My father lived there.) So each sector had its own
asteroid crew, and I got to know the Royal Dutch miners pretty well. Swann was one of
the rocketry and guidance officers, and a good friend of my husband Charlie, who was
also in R and G. Over the course of many runs in the belt I talked with Swann often, and
even after Charlie and I divorced we remained close.
 But when the Committee took over the mining operations in 2213, all the teams, even
the Soviets, were thrown into a common pool, and I saw all of my friends from Royal
Dutch a lot less often. My infrequent assignments with Swann had been cause for
celebration, and this present assignment, with him as captain, I had thought would be a
real pleasure.
Now, pulling around the ship I was the most important person on, I was not so sure.
But I thought, Swann will tell me what's going on. And if he doesn't know anything about
all this, then he'd better be told that something funny is happening.
I found him in one of the little window rooms, seated before the thick plasteel
separating him from the vacuum. His long legs were crossed in the yoga position, and he
hummed softly: meditating, his mind a floating mirror of the changing square of stars.
"Hey Eric," I said, none too softly.
"Emma," he said dreamily, and stretched his arms like a cat. "Sit down." He showed