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

"Well?" I said, annoyed myself by this time. "We're all going to live for a thousand
years, so what's your rush? There's time for all of your great projects. Right now we need
those asteroids."
"The corporations need them. And the Committee."
"The Committee's just organizing all of our efforts for our own good," I said.
"They just make the trains run on time, eh?" he said, taking a deep swallow from his
drink.
"Yes," I said, not understanding what he meant. "Yes, they do."
He shook his head with disgust. "You're an all-American girl, all right. Everything is
oh kay. Leave the politics to the others."
"And you are a true Soviet," I retorted, struggling away from him in our dining booth.
"Blaming your problems on the government...."
And we went on from there, senselessly and for no reason but pride and hurt feelings.
I remember him making a grim prediction: "They will make a happy American Kremlin
up here, and you won't care, as long as your job is secure." But most of what we said was
less logical than that.
And a long, miserable week later, a blur of bitter fights, one of those times when you
have ruined a relationship though you don't know how, and wish desperately that time
could be reversed and the unknown mistake undone, he left. The Soviet mining people
wanted him in space again and he just left, without saying good-bye, though I called his
dorm again and again in those last few days. And then I knew -- I learned it, in the course
of long black walks over the broad basin, standing alone on that rocky plain -- that I
could be spurned. It was a hard lesson.
In a few years I was out among the asteroids myself, working for Royal Dutch. I heard
stories about Davydov getting in trouble with the Soviet mining command, but I didn't
pay much attention. It was a matter of pride to ignore anything I heard about him. So I
never got the full story of what had happened to him.
Then, many years later -- just three years before this mutiny, in fact -- the Hidalgo
disappeared out in the Trojans, breaking radio contact with the famous last words, "Now
wait just a minute." No wreckage was ever found, the matter was hushed up by the
Committee censors, and no explanation was ever offered. Looking over the list of crew
members I saw his name at the top -- Oleg Davydov -- and the pain flooded through me
again, worse than ever before. It was one of the worst moments of my life. We had parted
in anger, he had left me without even saying good-bye, and now, no matter how many
years the gerontologists gave me, I would never be able to change those facts, for he was
dead. It was very sad.
...Thus, when Eric Swann came to take me across to the Hidalgo, to see Davydov
again, I did not know exactly what I felt. My heart beat rapidly, I had to strain to make
casual, terse conversation with Eric. What would he look like? What would I say to him,
or him to me? I didn't have the slightest idea.
Well, he looked very much like he had sixty years before. Perhaps a little heavier,
bearlike with his dark hair, his broad shoulders and chest and rump. His ice-blue eyes
surveyed me without any visible sign of recognition.
We were on the empty bridge of the Hidalgo. At a nod from Davydov, Eric had
slipped away down the jump tube. In the breathy vented silence I walked around the
bridge slowly, my velcro slippers making little rip rip rip noises. My pulse was fast. I
discovered that I was still angry with him. And I felt that he had personally deceived me
with the news of his death. Or perhaps it was the mutiny--
"You look much the same," he said. The sound of his voice triggered a hundred
memories. I looked at him without replying. Finally he said, with a stiff, slight smile,