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

Sheffield, development would certainly continue, until they had built a tent
city entirely ringing the caldera, looking down into it. No doubt they would
then tent the caldera itself, and occupy the round floor-add about 1,500
square kilometers to the city, though it was a question who would want to live
at the bottom of such a hole, like living at the bottom of a mohole, rock
walls rising up around you as if you were in some circular roofless cathedral
... perhaps it would appeal to some. The Bogda-novists had lived in moholes
for years, after all. Grow forests, build climber's huts or rather
millionaires' penthouses on the arcuate balcony ledges, cut staircases into
the sides of the rock, install glass elevators that took all day to go up or
down ... rooftops, row houses, skyscrapers reaching up toward the rim,
heliports on their flat round roofs, pistes, flying freeways ... oh yes, the
whole summit of Pa-vonis Mons, caldera and all, could be covered by the great
world city, which was always growing, growing like a fungus over every rock in
the solar system. Billions of people, trillions of people, quadrillions of
people, all as close to immortal as they could make themselves....
She shook her head, in a great confusion of spirits. The radicals in Lastflow
were not her people, not really, but unless they succeeded, the summit of
Pavonis and everywhere else on Mars would become part of the great world city.
She tried to concentrate on the view, she tried to feel it, the awe of the
symmetrical formation, the love of rock hard under her bottom. Her feet hung
over the edge of the bench, she kicked her heels against basalt; she could
throw a pebble and it would fall five thousand meters. But she couldn't
concentrate. She couldn't feel it. Petrification. So numb, for so long. . ..
She sniffed, shook her head, pulled her feet in over the edge. Walked back up
to her rover.




She dreamed of the long run-out. The landslide was rolling across the floor of
Melas Chasma, about to strike her. Everything visible with surreal clarity.
Again she remembered Simon, again she groaned and got off the little dike,
going through the motions, appeasing a dead man inside her, feeling awful. The
ground was vibrating-
She woke, by her own volition she thought-escaping, running away-but there was
a hand, pulling hard on her arm.
"Ann, Ann, Ann."
It was Nadia. Another surprise. Ann struggled up, disoriented. "Where are we?"
"Pavonis, Ann. The revolution. I came over and woke you because a fight has
broken out between Kasei's Reds and the greens in Sheffield."
The present rolled over her like the landslide in her dream. She jerked out of
Nadia's grasp, groped for her shirt. "Wasn't my rover locked?"
"I broke in."
"Ah." Ann stood up, still foggy, getting more annoyed the more she understood
the situation. "Now what happened?"
"They launched missiles at the cable."
"They did!" Another jolt, further clearing away the fog. "And?"
"It didn't work. The cable's defense systems shot them down. They've got a lot
of hardware up there now, and they're happy to be able to use it at last. But