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

even among planetary colonials all of whom are descended from, or are
themselves, highly selected and drastically screened stock.
But Mother told the Board that five was all that she had time for and then had
us as fast as possible, while fidgeting at a desk job in the Bureau of Planetary
Engineering. Then she popped her babies into deep-freeze as fast as she
had them, all but me, since I was the first. Clark spent two years at constant
entropy, else he would be almost as old as I am-deep-freeze time doesn’t
count, of course, and his official birthday is the day he was decanted. I
remember how jealous I was- Mother was just back from conditioning Juno
and it didn’t seem fair to me that she would immediately start raising a baby.
Uncle Tom talked me out of that, with a lot of lap sitting, and I am no longer
jealous of Clark-merely wary.
So we’ve got Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon in the subbasement of the crèche
at Marsopolis, and we’ll uncork
and name at least one of them as soon as we get back from Earth. Mother is
thinking of revivifying Gamma and Epsilon together and raising them as twins
(they’re girls) and then launching Delta, who is a boy, as soon as the girls are
housebroken. Daddy says that is not fair, because Delta is entitled to be

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older than Epsilon by natural priority of birth date. Mother says that is mere
worship of precedent and that she does wish Daddy would learn to leave his
reverence for the past on the campus when he comes home in the evening.
Daddy says that Mother has no sentimental feelings-and Mother says she
certainly hopes not, at least with any problem requiring rational analysis-and
Daddy says let’s be rational, then . . . twin older sisters would either break a
boy’s spirit or else spoil him rotten.
Mother says that is unscientific and unfounded. Daddy says that Mother
merely wants to get two chores out of the way at once-whereupon Mother
heartily agrees and demands to know why proved production engineering
principles should not be applied to domestic economy?
Daddy doesn’t answer this. Instead he remarks thoughtfully that he must
admit that two little girls dressed just alike would be kind of cute ... name
them “Margret” and “Marguerite” and call them “Peg” and “Meg”- Clark
muttered to me, “Why uncork them at all?
Why not just sneak down some night and open the valves and call it an
accident?”


I told him to go wash out his mouth with prussic acid and not let Daddy hear
him talk that way. Daddy would have walloped him properly. Daddy, although
a historian, is devoted to the latest, most progressive theories of child
psychology and applies them by canalizing the cortex through pain
association whenever he really wants to ensure that a lesson will not be
forgotten. As he puts it so neatly: “Spare the rod and spoil the child.”
I canalize most readily and learned very early indeed how to predict and
avoid incidents which would result in Daddy’s applying his theories and his
hand. But in Clark’s case it is almost necessary to use a club simply to gain
his divided attention.
So it is now clearly evident that we are going to have twin baby sisters. But it