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

this old enemy! Well, Sax-the old Sax anyway-was nothing if not rational.
Therefore easy to read. Easier than the young fanatics of the Kakaze, now that
she thought of it.
And one could only meet him on his own ground, speak to him on his own terms.
So she sat across from him in the meetings and tried to concentrate, even
though her mind seemed to be hardening somehow, petrifying right inside her
head. Round and round the arguments went: what to do on Pavonis? Pavonis Mons,
Peacock Mountain. Who would ascend the Peacock Throne? There were potential
shahs everywhere-Peter, Nirgal, Jackie, Zeyk, Kasei, Maya, Nadia, Mikhail,
Ariadne, the invisible Hiroko.. ..
Now someone was invoking the Dorsa Brevia conference as the framework for
discussion they should use. All very well, but without Hiroko among them the
moral center was gone, the one person in all Martian history, aside from John
Boone, to whom everyone would defer. But Hiroko and John were gone, along with
Arkady, and Frank, who would have come in useful now, if he had been on her
side, which he wouldn't have been. All gone. And they were left with anarchy.
Curious how at a crowded table those absent could be more visible than those
present. Hiroko, for instance; people referred to her frequently; and no doubt
she was somewhere in the outback, deserting them as usual in their hour of
need. Pissing them out of the nest.
Curious too how the only child of their lost heroes, Kasei the son of John and
Hiroko, should be the most radical leader there, a disquieting man even though
he was on her side. There he sat, shaking his gray head at Art, a small smile
twisting his mouth. He was nothing like either John or Hiroko-well, he had
some of Hiroko's arrogance, some of John's simplicity. The worst of both. And
yet he was a power, he did what he wanted, and a lot of people followed him.
But he was not like his parents had been.
And Peter, sitting just two seats away from Kasei, was nothing like her or
Simon. It was hard to see what blood relationships meant; nothing, obviously.
Though it did twist her heart to hear Peter speak, as he argued with Kasei and
opposed the Reds at every point, making a case for some kind of interplanetary
collaborationism. And never in these sessions addressing her, or even looking
at her. It was perhaps intended as some kind of courtesy-I will not argue with
you in public. But it looked like a slight-I will not argue with you because
you don't matter.
He continued to argue for keeping the cable, and agreed with Art about the
Dorsa Brevia document, naturally, given the green majority that had existed
then and persisted now. Using Dorsa Brevia as a guide would assure the cable's
survival. Meaning the continued presence of the United Nations Transitional
Authority. And indeed some of them around Peter were talking about
"semiautonomy" in relation to Terra, instead of independence, and Peter went
along with that; it made her sick. And all without meeting her eye. It was
Simon-like, somehow, a kind of silence. It made her angry.
"We have no reason to talk about long-term plans until we have solved the
cable problem," she said, interrupting him and earning a very black look
indeed, as if she had broken an understanding; but there was no understanding,
and why should they not argue, when they had no real relationship-nothing but
biology . . . ?
Art claimed that the UN was now saying that it would be willing to agree to
Martian semiautonomy, as long as Mars remained in "close consultation" with