"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 3 - Green Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

One morning he went into the school and came on Jackie and Dao in the coatroom. They jumped as he
entered, and by the time he had gotten his coat off and gone into the schoolroom he knew they had been
kissing.

After school he circled the lake in the blue-white glow of a summer afternoon, watching the wave
machine rise and pulse down, like the clamping sensations in his chest. Pain curved through him like the
swells moving over the water. He couldnтАЩt help it, even though it was ridiculous and he knew it. There
was a lot of kissing going on among them these days in the bathhouse, as they splashed and tugged and
pushed and tickled. The girls kissed each other and said it was тАЬpractice kissingтАЭ that didnтАЩt count, and
sometimes they turned this practice on the boys; Nirgal had been kissed by Rachel many times, and also
by Emily and Tiu and Nanedi, and once the latter two had held him and kissed his ears in an attempt to
embarrass him in the public bath with an erection; and once Jackie had pulled them away from him and
knocked him into the deep end, and bit his shoulder as they wrestled; and these were just the most
memorable of the hundreds of slippery wet warm naked contacts which were making the baths such a
high point of the day.

But outside the bathhouse, as if to try to contain such volatile forces, they had become extremely formal
with each other, with the boys and girls bunched in gangs that played separately more often than not. So
kissing in the coatroom represented something new, and seriousтАФand the look Nirgal had seen on
Jackie and DaoтАЩs faces was so superior, as if they knew something he didnтАЩtтАФ which was true. And it
was that which hurt, that exclusion, that knowledge. Especially since he wasnтАЩt that ignorant; he was sure
they were lying together, making each other come. They were lovers, their look said it. His laughing
beautiful Jackie was no longer his. And in fact never had been.



He slept poorly in the following nights. JackieтАЩs room was in the shoot beside his, and DaoтАЩs was two in
the opposite direction, and every creak of the hanging bridges sounded like footsteps; and sometimes her
curved window glowed with flickering orange lamplight. Instead of remaining in his room to be tortured
he began to stay up late every night in the common rooms, reading and eavesdropping on the adults.

So he was there when they started talking about SimonтАЩs illness. Simon was PeterтАЩs father, a quiet man
who was usually away, on expeditions with PeterтАЩs mother, Ann. Now it appeared that he had something
they called resistant leukemia. Vlad and Ursula noticed Nirgal listening, and they tried to reassure him,
but Nirgal could see that they werenтАЩt telling him everything. In fact they were regarding him with a
strange speculative look. Later he climbed to his high room and got in bed and turned on his lectern, and
looked up тАЬLeukemia,тАЭ and read the abstract at the start of the entry. A potentially fatal disease, now
usually amenable to treatment. Potentially fatal diseaseтАФa shocking concept. He tossed uneasily that
night, plagued by dreams through the gray bird-chirp dawn. Plants died, animals died, but not people.
But they were animals.

The next night he stayed up with the adults again, feeling exhausted and strange. Vlad and Ursula sat
down on the floor beside him. They told him that Simon would be helped by a bone marrow transplant,
and that he and Nirgal shared a rare type of blood. Neither Ann nor Peter had it, nor any of NirgalтАЩs
brothers or sisters or halves. He had gotten it through his father, but even his father didnтАЩt have it, not
exactly. Just him and Simon, in all the sanctuaries. There were only five thousand people in all of the
sanctuaries together, and Simon and NirgalтАЩs blood type was one in a million. Would he donate some of
his bone marrow, they asked.