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

Mother is twice as good-looking as I am and much taller than I ever will be;
she looks like a Valkyrie about to gallop off into the sky. She holds a
systemwide license as a Master Engineer, Heavy Construction, Surface or
Free Fall, and is entitled to wear both the Hoover Medal with cluster and the
Christiana Order, Knight Commander, for bossing the rebuilding of Deimos
and Phobos. But she’s more than just the traditional hairy engineer; she has
a social presence which she can switch from warmly charming to frostily
intimidating at will, she holds honorary degrees galore, and she publishes
popular little gems such as “Design Criteria with Respect to the Effects of
Radiation on the Bonding of Pressure-Loaded Sandwich Structures.”
It is because Mother is often away from home for professional reasons that
Lam, from time to time, the reluctant custodian of my younger brother. Still, I
suppose it is good practice, for how can I ever expect to command my own
ship if I can’t tame a six-year-old savage? Mother says that a boss who is
forced to part a man’s hair with a wrench has failed at some point, so I try to
control our junior nihilist without resorting to force. Besides, using force on
Clark is very chancy; he masses as much as I do and he fights dirty.
It was the job Mother did on Deimos that accounts for Clark and myself.
Mother was determined to meet her construction dates; and Daddy, on leave
from Ares U. with a Guggenheim grant, was even more frantically determined
to save every scrap of the ancient Martian artifacts no matter how much it
delayed construction; this threw them into such intimate and bitter conflict
that they got married and for a while Mother had babies.
Daddy and Mother are Jack Spratt and his wife; he is interested in everything
that has already happened, she is interested only in what is going to happen,
especially if she herself is making it happen. Daddy’s title is Van Loon
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Professor of Terrestrial History but his real love is Martian history, especially
if it happened fifty million years ago. But do not think that Daddy is a
cloistered don given only to contemplation and study. When he was even
younger than I am now, he lost an arm one chilly night in the attack on the
Company Offices during the Revolution-and he can still shoot straight and
fast with the hand he has left.
The rest of our family is Great-Uncle Tom, Daddy’s father’s brother. Uncle
Tom is a parasite. So he says. It is true that you don’t see him work much,
but he was an old man before I was born. He is a Revolutionary veteran,
same as Daddy, and is a Past Grand Commander of the Martian Legion and
a Senator-at-Large
of the Republic, but he doesn’t seem to spend much time on either sort of
politics, Legion or public; instead he hangs out at the Elks Club and plays
pinochle with other relics of the past. Uncle Tom is really my closest relative,
for he isn’t as intense as my parents, nor as busy, and will always take time
to talk with me. Furthermore he has a streak of Original Sin which makes him
sympathetic to my problems. He says that I have such a streak, too, much
wider than his. Concerning this, I reserve my opinion.
That’s our family and we are all going to Earth. Wups! I left out three-the
infants. But they hardly count now and it is easy to forget them. When Daddy
and Mother got married, the PEG Board-Population, Ecology, & Genetics-
pegged them at five and would have allowed them seven had they requested
it, for, as you may have gathered, my parents are rather highgrade citizens