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

caves or on the savannahЧstories of microfossils wrecked by our bio-
organisms, of ruins found in dust storms and then lost forever, of Big Man
and all his adventures, of the elusive little red people, always glimpsed out
of the corner of the eye. And all of these tales are told in an attempt to
give Mars life, or to bring it to life. Because we are still those animals
who survived the Ice Age, and looked up at the night sky in wonder, and
told stories. And Mars has never ceased to be what it was to us from our
very beginningЧa great sign, a great symbol, a great power.
And so we came here. It had been a power; now it became a place.

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". . . And so we came here. But what they didn't realize was that by
the time we got to Mars, we would be so changed by the voyage out that
nothing we had been told to do mattered anymore. It wasn't like
submarining or settling the Wild WestЧit was an entirely new experience,
and as the flight of the Ares went on, the Earth finally became so distant
that it was nothing but a blue star among all the others, its voices so
delayed that they seemed to come from a previous century. We were on
our own; and so we became fundamentally different beings."
All lies, Frank Chalmers thought irritably. He was sitting in a row of
dignitaries, watching his old friend John Boone give the usual Boone
Inspirational Address. It made Chalmers weary. The truth was, the trip to
Mars had been the functional equivalent of a long train ride. Not only had
they not become fundamentally different beings, they had actually become
more like themselves than ever, stripped of habits until they were left with
nothing but the naked raw material of their selves. But John stood up
there waving a forefinger at the crowd, saying "We came here to make
something new, and when we arrived our earthly differences fell away,
irrelevant in this new world!" Yes, he meant it all literally. His vision of
Mars was a lens that distorted everything he saw, a kind of religion.
Chalmers stopped listening and let his gaze wander over the new city.
They were going to call it Nicosia. It was the first town of any size to be
built free-standing on the martian surface; all the buildings were set inside
what was in effect an immense clear tent, supported by a nearly invisible
frame, and placed on the rise of Tharsis, west of Noctis Labyrinthus. This
location gave it a tremendous view, with a distant western horizon
punctuated by the broad peak of Pavonis Mons. For the Mars veterans in
the crowd it was giddy stuff: they were on the surface, they were out of
the trenches and mesas and craters, they could see forever! Hurrah!
A laugh from the audience drew Frank's attention back to his old
friend. John Boone had a slightly hoarse voice, and a friendly Midwestern
accent, and he was by turns (and somehow even all at once) relaxed,
intense, sincere, self-mocking, modest, confident, serious, and funny. In
short, the perfect public speaker. And the audience was rapt; this was the
First Man On Mars speaking to them, and judging by the looks on their
faces they might as well have been watching Jesus produce their evening
meal out of the loaves and fishes. And in fact John almost deserved their
adoration, for performing a similar miracle on another plane, transforming
their tin can existence into an astounding spiritual voyage. "On Mars we