"Kevin J. Anderson - Climbing Olympus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Anderson Kevin J)

The _dva_ man lowered his eyes, then turned to extend his arm, spreading a gloved hand toward the gently sloping symmetrical cone of Pavonis Mons that rode the foreshortened horizon. "We think he may have been the Man of the Mountain. There have been sightings, rumors, for many years. We _dvas_ see many things, Commissioner. If you wish to find the _adins_, look there."
Rachel turned back to her rover, her mind buzzing with fear and uncertainty. Did she really want to find the _adins_, if they still survived? They had caused more damage to her career and pain than any of her other failures. But Rachel Dycek wanted to face them, to demand answers ... and to learn what they had been doing for the last fifteen years.
The _dva_ man followed her, touching her suited arm. She felt the pressure of his strong grip through the tough, insulated fabric. His eyes were shadowed under their sheltering brows, deeply concerned.
"About your successor, Commissioner..." he said. "He does understand what we are doing here? The _dvas_ will not be sent back to Earth?"
Rachel felt a stab inside as she stared at the _dva_ man and his two women, looking forlorn beside their ruined pipeline, their damaged shelter, their dead comrades. "No, you do not have to worry about that. Mars is your home now. You own this land, remember? It is in the UNSA agreement for all _dva_ volunteers. You will stay here for the rest of your lives. Continue to do your best."
"We will, Commissioner."
Rachel clambered back through the airlock membrane of the rover. Her eyes stung with disappointed tears. Just what _would_ Keefer do with her _dvas_? If he proved too unfeeling, maybe they would rebel just as the _adins_ had.
She flipped up her faceplate and took long breaths of the cold air inside the vehicle. After sitting motionless behind the controls of the rover for a long moment, she noticed the _dvas_ staring at her, waiting for her to depart. "Power on, _Percival_," she said. "Prepare to depart."
Rachel drove off toward the volcanic highlands and the mighty rise of Pavonis, leaving the _dvas_ behind with their spilled ice and their dead.
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CORA MARISOVNA
She waited at the cave mouth, watching the desolate face of Mars below. She waited for _him_. Cora felt as if she died every time Boris went away. He had been gone for so long.
Barely able to move anymore, Cora Marisovna took her monotonous meals just inside the sheltering passage. Her joints swollen, her muscles creaking, she waited for the inevitable.
Always keeping himself busy, Stroganov went about the unending tasks that only he seemed to care about. The other _adins_ had settled into an angry or apathetic listlessness, but Stroganov continued to find work, to find goals, to leave his mark in a way that Cora secretly suspected would last far longer than any grand gesture Boris made. And Stroganov's sculptures and text chronicles were far less dangerous than Boris's attacks.
Nastasia paced back and forth, chattering, sometimes speaking to Cora, sometimes to the bare rocks. Cora wished that she could find her own fantasy world to live in, as Nastasia had, a place where she could live happily ever after with her prince and a family of laughing children.
Inside, the _adin_ caves were comfortable, the air warm and breathable, if tainted with sulfurous exhaust from the slumbering shield volcano. The dim light hid the traces of green lichen that crawled over the rocks. The distant sun had risen, spilling pale light along the cracked slopes. The interior of the lava tubes sparkled as frost exhaled into steam with the day's warmth.
Though she could not feel the cold wind against her _adin_ skin, Cora took comfort in knowing she was in some kind of shelter -- though it held little comfort without Boris Tiban.
She had begun her vigil at the cave mouth as soon as Boris left with Nikolas the day before. Outside, Stroganov's tall stone faces stared like palace guards, scowling visages of famous Russian heroes. Cora wondered how her Boris Tiban would stack up against them in the march of history. Would anyone sing folk songs about the first great Martian rebel?
Cora thought of how long it had been since she had tried to sing. Had she ever sung on Mars? It would be a frivolous waste of moisture and air.
Boris had heard her lovely voice only a few times in the rich atmosphere of Earth, in Neryungri in the spring before the surgeries. Cora's voice had been deep and musical, not the shrill tones caused by thin air. By its very nature, Mars ruined everything.
Cora had also been beautiful as a girl. As a human. But she refused to leave the caves now, especially now.
In the grotto, out of sight but not earshot, Stroganov and Nastasia were making love -- he, somber and silent; she, calling him by various names from her imaginary world. Stroganov seemed pleased to be confused with historical figures, especially when she cried out the name of one of his sculpted heroes. In the echoing upper chamber Stroganov gasped loudly and then he was finished, as always. He got up to return to the lower tunnels, back to his work. Nastasia lay by herself, cooing.
Cora continued her vigil. Phobos passed overhead again, trailing a few dim shooting stars. The shadows changed positions on the rocks.
Barely noticeable, a tiny figure appeared on the slope below, toiling upward. Cora leaned forward, trying to see better. It was an _adin_, moving at a steady pace -- an _adin_ alone. He plodded without enthusiasm, as if defeated.
She felt a stab go through her abdomen and she winced. Her muscles clenched, distracting her -- but the physical pain was nothing. What if Boris had been killed? She was terribly afraid of him when he was with her, afraid _for_ him when he was gone. Cora knew the lengths to which Boris would go, the desperate actions he had taken in his life, the foolhardy risks. Cora didn't understand why.
Or what if Nikolas had died? Young Nikolas, who looked up to his leader with selfless adoration, had volunteered for the _adin_ surgeries the moment he learned that Boris had been selected for the program. Boris had been angry with him, annoyed that Nikolas would voluntarily play the government's game, but Nikolas would not relent. He had his mind set on going to Mars with the rest of the _adins_, with Boris Tiban.
What if Nikolas had been the one killed? Or lost, or captured? It would be a devastating tragedy for the surviving _adins_, but Cora found herself praying for the lesser of two disasters. She could not bear to lose Boris.
"Someone is coming!" she shouted down into the cavern, then drew a deep hitching breath. "He is alone!"
By the time Stroganov had worked his way back to the entrance, still holding the metal stylus he used to etch his words into the polished rock wall, Cora could squint through her frilled eyeguards and make out the body outline of the approaching _adin_. Yes, it was Boris, the man she had held, around whom she had wrapped her arms and legs in the frigid sands or on iron-hard lava rock.
Boris had returned from his raid, leaving Nikolas behind.
Stroganov brushed past Cora, ignoring her, and hurried out of the cave. "Oh, no," he muttered. Nastasia clung to his arm.
The long morning shadows streamed out behind the tall, thin statues of old Russian rebels, making a forest of dimness. Stroganov hesitated, staring at the solitary _adin_ trudging up the slope. He waited, standing like a dead tree.
Feeling awkward and bloated, Cora pulled herself to her feet and went to the pool of sunlight at the cave's edge, but she stopped short of going outside. She felt herself trembling, not wanting to learn what had happened.
"Where is Nikolas?" Stroganov shouted as soon as Boris came near enough.
Boris did not answer until he had come all the way up to their shelter. He looked at Stroganov and Nastasia, glanced toward Cora before she could flinch back into the darkness, then stared beseechingly at the tall, glowering heads of the historical rebels, like a penitent praying before an icon.
"Dead," he finally said. "Nikolas is dead. The _dvas_ killed him." He leaned against his pointed metal staff for a moment, as if in defeat, then winced before striding toward the cave mouth.
Stroganov hunched suddenly, as if he had received a blow to the stomach. He leaned against the weather-worn sculpture of Lenin for support. "Oh, Boris!" Stroganov said. His words sounded too human and too sympathetic coming from the tight, insulated lips, the flattened face.
Boris mumbled so quietly that Cora could barely hear him. "We destroyed one of the water pumping stations. Now they know that the _adins_ are still around, and perhaps they will tremble in their beds, fearing where we will strike next. They must know we will avenge Nikolas."
At first, Nastasia did not seem to know who Boris was talking about, but then she fell forward to the crumbled lava, wailing in grief. She picked up a fistful of the sharp volcanic debris and rubbed it on her face, scoring the plasticized skin. She pounded her fist in the dirt, making small craters. Boris and Stroganov just watched her, unable to help, accustomed to her unpredictable reactions.
Boris turned toward the cave, paused to look at Cora uncertainly, but she flinched, feeling the fear of him return. He plodded toward her, as if a great weight bore him down, despite the low gravity. Carrying his titanium staff, Boris looked very regal, like a tsar in his own right.
Fighting her fear, Cora stepped out to meet him, swaying as she walked. "I am glad you came back, Boris. I was worried." He embraced her, and he actually seemed to be trembling.
She remembered how this angry man had taken control of the other _adins_, how he had led them in his dreams for their future on Mars, just like the Cossack rebel Pugachev. Though the _adins_ had seen more death than any of them had ever imagined, the loss of Nikolas had dealt him a deep wound. With Nikolas dead, only four _adins_ remained of the initial thirty. Twenty-six dead in sixteen years. It had once been a grand dream for them to be _adins_, following their great hero Boris, but now...
Boris stood rigid, in silence, for a long moment. The stubby ends of his fingers pressed against Cora's back. "I can barely feel you against me, Cora," he whispered into the protected ear holes. "I'm like a man in a rubber monster suit from one of those ridiculous American films about Martians."
Cora shook her head against his chest. _No_, she thought, _we are all human inside. Human!_ The changes to Cora's body were vivid reminders of that. Boris must never forget it.
Thirty _adins_ had survived the transformational surgery in Siberia -- fewer than half of the candidates, though the camp doctors had not been forthcoming with the actual numbers of their failures. The uncertainty and the rumors among the hurting and recovering patients made the fear seem greater.
A young woman, Cora had been terrified, but she remained quiet through every step of the process, trying not to be noticed by anyone else who could hurt her. Taking the medications they gave her, willingly performing all the test routines, inhaling the anesthetic, refusing to complain when she felt the agony of healing incisions and dissolving internal stitches over and over and over again. From the time of her childhood, any thought of argument had been squashed out of her. The best thing was usually to nod and do as she was told. She remembered trying to sleep in the dim recovery ward, listening to the others whimper, her head filled with a thousand questions she was too afraid to ask.
As with many of the native Siberian children in the villages around Neryungri, Cora was ethnically mixed, mostly Siberian with an obvious trace of Mongol and a dash of gypsy blood. She had dark beautiful eyes, long glistening Asiatic hair, and a wiry body that might have looked delicate at first glance but had been tuned and strengthened by a life of hardship. At least, that was how she _remembered_ she looked.
Cora had been raised by her mother and grandmother near the labor camp after her father died in a construction accident. Sometimes her mother took Cora on bricklaying projects in cold so intense that the mortar froze faster than the workers could lay bricks. At other times, her grandmother made her sit and do embroidery in a poorly ventilated room, with fumes from kerosene heaters that made her dark eyes burn. Once, her grandmother had commented on how beautiful and shiny Cora's eyes were.
By the time Cora turned twenty, her mother and grandmother were in desperate financial straits, losing ground each year. With the repeated economic upheavals and devalued currency in the Sovereign Republics, no one had money to buy the pretty embroidered things the women produced at home. The population in the camp itself was growing smaller.
Then the big scientific facility had appeared. The _adin_ project needed healthy young female subjects. The call for volunteers extended beyond the camp boundaries to the Neryungri village proper.