"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 1 - Red Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

matters but action.тАЭ

That gave the young Arab pause. тАЬI canтАЩt be sure,тАЭ he said at last.

Frank poked him in the arm, watched a shock run through the man. тАЬItтАЩs your people
weтАЩre talking about. ItтАЩs this planet weтАЩre talking about.тАЭ

SelimтАЩs mouth disappeared under his moustache. After a time he said, тАЬItтАЩs true.тАЭ

Frank said nothing. They looked in the window together, as if judging boots.

Finally Frank raised a hand. тАЬIтАЩll talk to Boone again,тАЭ he said quietly. тАЬTonight. He
leaves tomorrow. IтАЩll try to talk to him, to reason with him. I doubt it will matter. It never has
before. But IтАЩll try. AfterwardsтАж we should meet.тАЭ

тАЬYes.тАЭ

тАЬIn the park, then, the southernmost path. Around eleven.тАЭ
 Selim nodded.

Chalmers transfixed him with a stare. тАЬTalk means nothing,тАЭ he said brusquely, and
walked away.

###

The next boulevard Chalmers came to was crowded with people clumped outside
open-front bars, or kiosks selling cous-cous and bratwurst. Arab and Swiss. It seemed
an odd combination, but they meshed well.

Tonight some of the Swiss were distributing face masks from the door of an
apartment. Apparently they were celebrating this stadtfest as a kind of Mardi Gras,
Fassnacht as they called it, with masks and music and every manner of social inversion,
just as it was back home on those wild February nights in Basel and Z├╝rich and Luzern. . . .
On an impulse Frank joined the line. тАЬAround every profound spirit a mask is always
growing,тАЭ he said to two young women in front of him. They nodded politely and then
resumed conversation in guttural Schwyzerd├╝├╝tsch, a dialect never written down, a private
code, incomprehensible even to Germans. It was another impenetrable culture, the Swiss,
in some ways even more so than the Arabs. That was it, Frank thought; they worked well
together because they were both so insular that they never made any real contact. He
laughed out loud as he took a mask, a black face with studded with red paste gems. He
put it on.

A line of masked celebrants snaked down the boulevard, drunk, loose, at the edge
of control. At an intersection the boulevard opened up into a small plaza, where a fountain
shot sun-colored water into the air. Around the fountain a steel drum band hammered out
a calypso tune. People gathered around, dancing or hopping in time to the low bong of
the bass drum. A hundred meters overhead a vent in the tent frame poured frigid air
down onto the plaza, air so cold that little flakes of snow floated in it, glinting in the light like
chips of mica. Then fireworks banged just under the tenting, and colored sparks fell down
through the snowflakes.