"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 4 - The Martians" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

red boxes. In many ways it seemed analogous to what the voyagers would be
doing when they arrived on Mars, and so of course to Michel it was all very
interesting.
There were one hundred and fifty-eight people there, and only a hundred
were going to be sent on the first trip out, to establish a permanent colony.
This was the plan as designed by the Americans and Russians, who had then
convened an international team to enact it. So this stay in Antarctica was a
kind of test, or winnowing. But it seemed to Michel that everyone there
assumed he or she would be among the chosen, so there was little of the
tension one saw in people doing job interviews. As they said, when it was
discussed at all - in other words when Michel asked about it - some candidates
were going to drop out, others would be invalided out, and others placed on
later trips to Mars, at worst. So there was no reason to worry. Most of the
people there were not worriers anyway - they were capable, brilliant, assured,
used to success. Michel worried about this.

They finished building their winter home by the autumn equinox, March 21st.
After that the alternation of day and night was dramatic, the brilliant
slanted light of the days ending with the sun sliding off to the north and
over the Olympus Range, the long twilights leading to a black starry darkness
that eventually would be complete, and last for months. At their latitude,
perpetual night would begin a little after mid-April.


The constellations as they revealed themselves were the stars of another
sky, foreign and strange to a northerner like Michel, reminding him that the
universe was a big place. Each day was shorter than the one before by a
palpable degree, and the sun burned lower through the sky, its beams pouring
down between the peaks of the Asgaard and Olympus Ranges like vibrant
stagelights. People got to know each other.
When they were first introduced, Maya had said 'So you are to evaluate
us!' with a look that seemed to suggest this could be a process that went both
ways. Michel had been impressed. Frank Chalmers, looking over her shoulder at
him, had seen this.

They were a mix of personality types, as one might. expect. But they all had
the basic social skilfulness that had allowed them to make it this far, so
that whether outgoing or withdrawn in their basic nature, they could still all
talk easily. They were interested in each other, naturally. Michel saw a lot
of relationships beginning to bloom around him. Romances too. Of course.
To Michel all the women in camp were beautiful. He fell a little in love
with a lot of them, as was his practice always. Men he loved as elder
brothers, women as goddesses he could never quite court (fortunately). Yes:
every woman was beautiful, and all men were heroes. Unless of course they
weren't. But most were; this was humanity's default state. So Michel felt, he
always had. It was an emotional setting that called out for psychoanalysis,
and in fact he had undergone analysis, without changing this feeling a bit
(fortunately). It was his take on people, as he had said to his therapists.
Naive, credulous, obtusely optimistic - and yet it made him a good clinical
psychiatrist. It was his gift.