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

Which led to a discussion about Allan's future, his schooling, his work in college. "Yes, I know there will be some courses you won't like, but don't let it be a stumbling block. Trust me, it's worth it. Always keep the end in sight. I know you can do it."
He folded his hands behind his head, then noticed the red light blinking. "Uh-oh, time's up. I can't wait to see you again, but you'll be almost thirty by then. Man, that's hard to believe. I'll send another message as soon as I can, and I'll try to get authorization for you to send your own videoletter reply. Bye."
He clicked the button a second time with his foot and got to his feet with a sigh. Then he encoded it with the appropriate passwords and transmitted the videoletter in a datapackage to the communications satellite.
Weary and wrung out, he decided against further socializing in the rec area and found his way to his quarters. He had not had much time to unwind since they reached Mars orbit. Though cramped by Earth standards, his room seemed spacious compared to his cabin on the Moon-Mars craft.
A new module had been added to Lowell Base in the last year. Robotically landed, the module had remained in its packaging for weeks until it was attached and inflated. Despite UNSA's request that the base personnel connect it themselves as an exercise, Rachel Dycek had ignored the orders and insisted that her _dvas_ do the work. The augmented humans had completed the task in half the projected time, though a few items of equipment had turned up missing shortly afterward. Stories about sticky-fingered _dvas_ were getting to be a joke, and Keefer promised to look into it. He suspected Dycek had a blind spot where her own project was concerned.
Yawning, he snapped out his bunk from the wall and locked down the braces. Moving slowly, feeling his muscles unknot, Keefer stripped out of his jumpsuit, turned up the space heater, and sponged off with an everdamp pad. He pulled on another insulated garment, moving quickly in the inescapable chill.
Finally, he lay back on the bunk, closing his eyes and hissing out a long, relaxed breath. He smelled clean, he felt at peace. _He was on Mars._ Outside, separated from him by only a thin wall of metallized plastic, the air of another planet tickled the modules.
Of course, the contentment could not last more than a few moments. It was the way of things.
Quick footsteps, then an insistent tapping on the wall near his quarters. "Commissioner Keefer! Excuse me. We have a problem. Are you in there? Commissioner Keefer?"
He got up to greet Dr. Evrani, a small, active Pakistani who seemed a constant blur of motion -- fidgeting, shuffling feet, darting eyes, palms brushing his thinning hair back.
"Yes? What is it?"
"It is no surprise, that is what it is! Some people cannot be bothered with the simplest responsibilities, no matter how important they may be." Evrani scowled and shook his head, looking at Keefer as if he were a coconspirator.
Keefer leaned against the door. "Who are you talking about?"
"Commissioner Dycek, of course! We left her in charge of the communications center this morning. But now she's gone. She has taken one of the long-distance rovers without even signing it out! No destination marked." Evrani made a disgusted sound. "She constantly is doing things like this. I am glad you are replacing her, sir."
Keefer felt a coil of tension wind up inside him again. He recalled Dycek's resigned attitude, her veiled hostility. He had no idea how to assess what she might have done. Had he missed something obvious, again? He decided to ignore Evrani's pandering attitude. "Any idea where she might have gone?"
Evrani held up one brown finger. "Ah, it gets worse. We cannot raise her or trace her. She has switched off _Percival'_s locator beacon. Deliberately! Can you imagine such irresponsibility? There are fifty people at this base, and she is not the only one who is needing to use the rover -- "
"Sixty-two," Keefer said. "This base now has sixty-two people."
"Yes, yes." Evrani jerked his shoulders with more enthusiasm than Keefer had ever seen in a shrug. "I checked in Commissioner Dycek's quarters -- she doesn't lock them, you know. There's something you might be wanting to see. You are in charge here, after all. We cannot let this sort of thing keep happening."
Scowling, Keefer slipped into a warm sweatsuit and slippers and followed Evrani through the pressure bulkheads. The meteorologist led him into the older habitation module where the first group of inhabitants had settled. This module had a much more lived-in feel to it. As a passing thought, Keefer wondered if he might like to move his quarters here, if any of the rooms emptied with the rotation of personnel.
Evrani led him to Dycek's quarters and jabbed a finger inside. "Look. I knocked, but got no answer. I opened the door, but she is not here."
A few belongings lay on the floor and on her tiny desk, scattered about as if Dycek had aimlessly considered packing but given up in disgust. Something lay crumpled on the bunk.
Keefer picked it up: a hardcopy newspaper clipping, sandwiched in plastic. He unfurled it to skim a few paragraphs about the UN hearings Dycek had faced, inflammatory descriptions of her _adin_ work, and skeptical postulations about what the _dvas_ would be like.
Apparently, Dycek had saved the clipping as a keepsake, displaying it on the wall of her quarters -- but why had she now torn it down and wrung the clipping in her hands until it lay twisted and unrecognizable on her bunk?
And then she had left the base without signing out, when nobody could see her, giving no indication of where she intended to go. She had deliberately made it impossible for the satellites to track her. Was she fleeing? Or did she have some innocuous, legitimate reason?
Keefer felt uneasiness crawl down his spine. Just how unsettled had she been, really? Had she cracked somehow in the isolation, the close quarters? It didn't make sense to him, but similar incidents were common enough in long-term Antarctica research stations. Keefer had read about them. Had he missed something important in his conversation with her the previous evening?
The work Rachel Dycek had done with the _adin_ project was controversial in its time, and she had suffered terribly for it. Keefer felt sorry for the way the newsnet wolves had attacked her. The _adin_ rebellion, the avalanche in Noctis Labyrinthus, and now Keefer coming to kick her out of a job -- had Dycek seen this as the last straw?
"You don't think she's doing something ... something dangerous, do you?" He peered into Evrani's curious pecan-brown eyes. The meteorologist seemed to be enjoying the situation.
"With Commissioner Dycek, one can never tell. Time and again, she -- "
Keefer looked at the clipping of the UN hearings again. _A trial by fire_, he thought. What if Rachel Dycek had been damaged in ways that no one had realized?
"Let's go to the communications center," he said. "Are you sure she didn't leave any message?"
Trotting ahead, Evrani took him through the rec module where Vickery and Shen were laughing and playing Ping-Pong while several others watched; they passed the mess room and entered the unimpressive nerve center of the base. No one else was there.
"Look for yourself," Evrani said. "She has made none of her regular log entries since early this morning, and it is full dark outside now. The rovers have spotlights on them and terrain guidance systems, but we never take them out during the nighttime. There's no need. She has never been out after dark by herself before. Something is definitely unusual here. I don't like it."
Keefer snooped around, but he did not know the controls well enough to see anything that Evrani might have missed. "No record of any messages coming in?"
"The person on duty is responsible for keeping those records, and Commissioner Dycek rarely bothered to do it."
Keefer scowled, trying to think of what Dycek might be doing. His mind kept insisting that Dycek must have a clear, logical reason for leaving without any hint as to where she was going, but his heart continued to suggest otherwise.
Had some emergency demanded her immediate attention? That must be the answer. But why hadn't she told anyone? And she had _intentionally_ left the destination blank, _intentionally_ shut off the locator. That was no accident.
"How long can she stay outside? How far can she go?" Keefer asked.
Evrani gave another of his spastic shrugs. "Enough air and food supplies for expeditions up to a week. _Percival_ is safety-rated for four hundred kilometers."
Keefer felt his heart sink to his stomach as the maze of possibilities opened before him. "And you know about safety factors -- she can probably drive twice that if she really wants to. What's to stop her?"
Evrani rubbed his palms together and strode over to one of the larger screens, tapping on the icon-based access board. "This is."
The image changed, fading out to be replaced by a detailed weathersat picture of the northern hemisphere of Mars. "Dr. al-Somak and I have watched this system very carefully. It is the largest storm to appear in this hemisphere in a year. Our terraforming activities play havoc with the climate, you know. Beludi and I are very excited at the possibilities of what we might learn from this. Viking Base is already in brown-out conditions, and they are collecting data."
He rubbed a thin finger on the image, showing the location of Lowell Base near the Martian equator. "The storm should reach our latitude late tomorrow."
Keefer stared at the gigantic cloud sweeping toward them, like a sledgehammer ready to smack anyone foolish enough to venture outside in it.
Someone like Rachel Dycek.
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RACHEL DYCEK
The great volcano of Pavonis Mons looked like a noble beacon as the storm approached from the north. Through _Percival_'s trapezoidal windowports Rachel could look out at the Martian sky and see bright stars even during the daytime. In the distance the lurking haze from the wall of windborne microfine dust swept into an impenetrable murk.
The uphill slope of Pavonis was shallow, taking forever to rise from the Tharsis Plain. The shield volcano had oozed thick lava and slowly built its cone in the low gravity over thousands of years, sliding out in a gentle slope, flat and inexorable until it pushed clear of the lower atmosphere.
Scrambling ahead on its numerous legs, gliding over all obstacles, _Percival_ made steady progress, kilometer after kilometer. Rachel hunched forward, letting the AI pilot do the driving. Somewhere up there, the _adins_ were hiding.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Percival Lowell had seen canals on Mars through his telescopes in the mountains of Arizona in the United States. He made a public sensation with his depictions of a dying race, a civilization winding down to extinction. Now, perhaps, the _adins_ were like that mythical dying people, hiding in the high altitudes. Rachel needed to talk to them, before it was too late.