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

ignored the rest, or tried to, Irishka frightened, Jackie red-eyed and
furious, her father killed this day after all, and though she was in Peter's
camp and so partly responsible for the crushing response to the Red offensive,
you could see with one look at her that someone would pay-but Ann ignored all
that, and walked across the room to Sax-who was in his nook in the far corner
of the big central room, sitting before a screen reading long columns of
figures, muttering things to his AI. Ann waved a hand between his face and his
screen and he looked up, startled.
Strangely, he was the only one of the whole crowd who did not appear to blame
her. Indeed he regarded her with his head tilted to the side, with a birdlike
curiosity that almost resembled sympathy.
"Bad news about Kasei," he said. "Kasei and all the rest. I'm glad that you
and Desmond survived."
She ignored that, and told him in a rapid undertone where the Reds were going,
and what she had told them to do. "I think I can keep them from trying any
more direct attacks on the cable," she said. "And from most acts of violence,
at least in the short term."
"Good," Sax said.
"But I want something for it," she said. "I want it and if I don't get it,
I'll set them on you forever."
"The soletta?" Sax asked.
She stared at him. He must have listened to her more often than she had
thought. "Yes."
His eyebrows came together as he thought it over. "It could cause a kind of
ice age," he said.
"Good."
He stared at her as he thought about it. She could see him doing it, in quick
flashes or bursts: ice age-thinner atmosphere-terraforming slowed-new
ecosystems destroyed- perhaps compensate-greenhouse gases. And so on and so
forth. It was almost funny how she could read this stranger's face, this hated
brother looking for a way out. He would look and look, but heat was the main
driver of terraforming, and with the huge orbiting array of mirrors in the
soletta gone, they would be at least restricted to Mars's normal level of
sunlight, thus slowed to a more "natural" pace. It was possible that the
inherent stability of that approach even appealed to Sax's conservatism, such
as it was.
"Okay," he said.
"You can speak for these people?" she said, waving disdainfully at the crowd
behind them, as if all her oldest companions were not among them, as if they
were UNTA technocrats or metanat functionaries....
"No," he said. "I only speak for me. But I can get rid of the soletta."
"You'd do it against their wishes?"
He frowned. "I think I can talk them into it. If not, I know I can talk the Da
Vinci team into it. They like challenges."
"Okay."
It was the best she could get from him, after all. She straightened up, still
nonplussed. She hadn't expected him to agree. And now that he had, she
discovered that she was still angry, still sick at heart. This concession-now
that she had it, it meant nothing. They would figure out other ways to heat
things. Sax would make his argument using that point, no doubt. Give the