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

Nirgal was surprised at this characterization. тАЬBut now,тАЭ he ventured, тАЬweтАЩre starting again.тАЭ

тАЬThatтАЩs right, boy! We are the primitives of an unknown civilization. Living in our own little
techno-Minoan matriarchy. Ha! I like it fine, myself. Seems to me the power that our women have taken
on was never that interesting to begin with. Power is one half of the yoke, donтАЩt you remember that from
the stuff I made you kids read? Master and slave wear the yoke together. Anarchy is the only true
freedom. So, well, whatever women do it seems to go against them. If theyтАЩre menтАЩs cows, then they
work till they drop. But if theyтАЩre our queens and goddesses then they only work the harder, because
they still have to do the cow work and then the paperwork too! No way. Just be thankful youтАЩre a man,
and as free as the sky.тАЭ

It was a peculiar way to think of things, Nirgal thought. But clearly it was one way to deal with the fact
of JackieтАЩs beauty, of her immense power over his mind. And so Nirgal ducked low in his seat and
stared out the window at the white stars in the black, thinking Free as the sky! Free as the sky!
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It was Ls 4, 2 March the 22nd, M-year 32, and the southern days were getting shorter. Coyote drove
their car hard every night, over intricate and invisible paths, through terrain that got more and more
rugged the farther they got from the polar cap. They stopped to rest during the daylight, and drove the
rest of the time. Nirgal tried to stay awake, but inevitably slept through part of every drive, and through
part of every dayтАЩs stop as well, until he became thoroughly confused in both time and space.

But when he was awake he was almost always looking out the window, at the ever-changing surface of
Mars. He couldnтАЩt get enough of it. In the layered terrain there was an infinite array of patterns, the
stratified stacks of sand fluted by the wind until each dune was cut like a birdтАЩs wing. When the layered
terrain finally ran out onto exposed bedrock, the laminate dunes became individual sand islands, scattered
over a jumbled plain of outcroppings and clusters of rock. It was redrock everywhere he looked, rock
sized from gravel to immense boulders that sat like buildings on the land. The sand islands were tucked
into every dip and hollow in this rockscape, and they also clustered around the feet of big knots of
boulders, and on the lee sides of low scarps, and in the interiors of craters.

And there were craters everywhere. They first appeared as two bumps rolling over the skysill, which
quickly proved to be the connected outer points of a low ridge. They passed scores of these flat-topped
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hills, some steep and sharp, others low and nearly buried, still others with their rims broken by smaller
later impacts, so that one could see right in to the sand drifts filling them.

One night just before dawn Coyote stopped the car.

тАЬSomething wrong?тАЭ

тАЬNo. WeтАЩve reached RayтАЩs Lookout, and I want you to see it. SunтАЩ11 be up in an hour.тАЭ