"Robert A. Heinlein - Podkayne of Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Heinlein Robert A)

not romantic and would not consider even a limited marriage on my ninth
birthday; I have other plans.
Not that I am opposed to marriage in due time, nor do I expect to have any
trouble snagging the male of my choice. In these memoirs I shall be frank
rather than modest because they will not be published until I am old and
famous, and I will certainly revise them
before then. In the meantime I am taking the precaution of writing English in
Martian Oldsctipt-a combination which I’m sure Daddy could puzzle out, only
he wouldn’t do such a thing unless I invited him to. Daddy is a dear and does
not snoopervise me. My brother Clark would pry, but he regards English as a
dead language and would never bother his head with Oldscript anyhow.
Perhaps you have seen a book titled: Eleven Years Old: The Pre-Adolescent
Adjustment Crisis in the Male. I read it, hoping that it would help me to cope
with my brother. Clark is just six, but the “Eleven Years” referred to in that title
are Terran years because it was written on Earth. If you will apply the
conversion factor of 1.8808 to attain real years, you will see that my brother
is exactly eleven of those undersized Earth years old.
That book did not help me much. It talks about “cushioning the transition into
the social group”-but there is no present indication that Clark ever intends to
join the human race. He is more likely to devise a way to blow up the
universe just to hear the bang. Since I am responsible for him much of the
time and since he has an I.Q. of 160 while mine is only 145, you can readily
see that I need all the advantage that greater age and maturity can give me.
At present my standing rule with him is: Keep your guard up and never offer
hostages.
Back to me-I’m colonial mongrel in ancestry, but the Swedish part is
dominant in my looks, with Polynesian and Asiatic fractions adding no more
than a notunpleasing exotic flavor. My legs are long for my height, my waist
is 48 centimeters and my chest is 90-not all of which is rib cage, I assure you,
even though we old colonial families all run to hypertrophied lung
development; some of it is burgeoning secondary sex characteristic. Besides
that, my hair is pale

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blond and wavy and I’m pretty. Not beautiful-Praxiteles would not have given
me a second look-but real beauty is likely to scare a man off, or else make
him quite unmanageable, whereas prettiness, properly handled, is an asset.
Up till a couple of years ago I used to regret not being male (in view of my
ambitions), but I at last realized how silly I was being; one might as well wish
for wings. As Mother says: “One works with available materials” . .. and I
found that the materials available were adequate. In fact I found that I like
being female; my hormone balance is okay and I’m quite well adjusted to the
world and vice versa. I’m smart enough not unnecessarily to show that I am
smart; I’ve got a long upper lip and a short nose, and when I wrinkle my nose
and look baffled, a man is usually only too glad to help me, especially if he is
about twice my age. There are more ways of computing a ballistic than by
counting it on your fingers.
That’s me: Poddy Fries, free citizen of Mars, female. Future pilot and
someday commander of deep-space exploration parties. Watch for me in the
news.