"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 2 - Blue Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Both he and Dao watched her.
"So you'll do it anyway," she said at last.
They continued to watch her. She saw all of a sudden that they would no more
do what she told them to do than would boys ordered about by a senile
grandmother. They were humoring her. Figuring out how they could best put her
to use.
"We have to," Kasei said. "It's in the best interest of Mars. Not just for
Reds, but all of us. We need some distance between us and Terra, and the
gravity well reestablishes that distance. Without it we'll be sucked down into
the maelstrom."
It was Ann's argument, it was just what she had been saying in the meetings in
east Pavonis. "But what if they try to stop you?"
"I don't think they can," Kasei said.
"But if they try?"
The two men glanced at each other. Dao shrugged.
So, Ann thought, watching them. They were willing to start a civil war.

People were still coming up the slopes of Pavonis to the summit, filling up
Sheffield, east Pavonis, Lastflow and the other rim tents. Among them were
Michel, Spencer, Vlad, Marina, and Ursula; Mikhail and a whole brigade of Bog-
danovists; Coyote, on his own; a group from Praxis; a large train of Swiss;
rover caravans of Arabs, both Sufi and secular; natives from other towns and
settlements on Mars. All coming up for the endgame. Everywhere else on Mars,
the natives had consolidated their control; all the physical plants were being
operated by local teams, in cooperation with Separation de I'Atmosphere. There
were some small pockets of metanat resistance, of course, and there were some
Kakaze out there systematically destroying terraform-ing projects; but Pavonis
was clearly the crux of the remaining problem-either the endgame of the
revolution or, as Ann was beginning to fear, the opening moves of a civil war.
Or both. It would not be the first time.
So she went to the meetings, and slept poorly at night, waking from troubled
sleep, or from naps in the transit between one meeting and the next. The
meetings were beginning to blur: all contentious, all pointless. She was
getting tired, and the broken sleep did not help. She was nearly 150 years
old, after all, and had not had a gerontological treatment in 25 years, and
she felt weary all through, all the time. So she watched from a well of
growing indifference as the others chewed over the situation. Earth was still
in disarray; the great flood caused by the collapse of the west Antarctic ice
sheet was indeed proving to be the ideal trigger mechanism for which General
Sax had waited. Sax felt no remorse for taking advantage of Earth's trouble,
Ann could see; he never thought once about the many deaths the flood had
caused down there. She could read his face thought by thought as he talked
about it-what would be the point of remorse? The flood was an accident, a
geological catastrophe like an ice age or a meteor impact. No one should waste
time feeling remorse for it, not even if they were taking advantage of it for
their own purposes. Best to take what good one possibly could from the chaos
and disorder, and not worry. All this was right on Sax's face as he discussed
what they should do next vis-a-vis Earth. Send a delegation, he suggested.
Diplomatic mission, personal appearance, something about throwing things
together; incoherent on the surface, but she could read him like a brother,