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

contradictory, Ann thought; because they were weak, Nadia was saying, they
could not afford to offend, and therefore they must change all Terran social
reality.
"But how!" Ann cried. "When you have no fulcrum you can't move a world! No
fulcrum, no lever, no force-"
"It isn't just Earth," Nadia replied. "There are going to be other settlements
in the solar system. Mercury, Luna, the big outer moons, the asteroids. We've
got to be part of all that. As the original settlement, we're the natural
leader. An unbridged gravity well is just an obstruction to all that-a
reduction in our ability to act, a reduction in our power."
"Getting in the way of progress," Ann said bitterly. "Think what Arkady would
have said to that. No, look. We had a chance here to make something different.
That was the whole point. We still have that chance. Everything that increases
the space within which we can create a new society is a good thing. Everything
that reduces our space is a bad thing. Think about it!"
Perhaps they did. But it made no difference. Any number of elements on Earth
were sending up their arguments for the cable-arguments, threats, entreaties.
They needed help down there. Any help. Art Randolph continued energetically
lobbying for the cable on behalf of Praxis, which was looking to Ann like it
would become the next transitional authority, metanationalism in its latest
manifestation or disguise.
But the natives were being slowly won over by them, intrigued by the
possibility of "conquering Earth," unaware of how impossible this was,
incapable of imagining Earth's vastness and immobility. One could tell them
and tell them, but they would never be able to imagine it.
Finally it came time for an informal vote. It was representative voting, they
had decided, one vote for each of the signatory groups to the Dorsa Brevia
document, one vote also to all the interested parties that had arisen since
then- new settlements in the outback, new political parties, associations,
labs, companies, guerrilla bands, the several red splinter groups. Before they
started some generous naive soul even offered the First Hundred a vote, and
everyone there laughed at the idea that the First Hundred might be able to
vote the same way on anything. The generous soul, a young woman from Dorsa
Brevia, then proposed that each of the First Hundred be given an individual
vote, but this was turned down as endangering the tenuous grasp they had on
representative governance. It would have made no difference anyway.
So they voted to allow the space elevator to remain standing, for the time
being-and in the possession of UNTA, down to and including the Socket, without
contestation. It was like King Canute deciding to declare the tide legal after
all, but no one laughed except Ann. The other Reds were furious. Ownership of
the Socket was still being actively contested, Dao objected loudly, the
neighborhood around it was vulnerable and could be taken, there was no reason
to back off like this, they were only trying to sweep a problem under the rug
because it was hard! But the majority were in agreement. The cable should
remain.

Ann felt the old urge: escape. Tents and trains, people, the little Manhattan
skyline of Sheffield against the south rim, the summit basalt all torn and
flattened and paved over.... There was a piste all the way around the rim, but
the western side of the caldera was very nearly uninhabited. So Ann got in one