"Kim Stanley Robinson - Mars 1 - Red Mars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robinson Kim Stanley)

Thus at the end of his speech he too got a big roar of applause. Irritated, he
announced it was time to eat, depriving Maya of her chance for a final remark. Although
probably she had known he would do that and so hadn't bothered to think of any. Frank
Chalmers liked to have the last word.

###

People crowded onto the temporary platform to mingle with the celebrities. It was
rare to get this many of the first hundred in one spot anymore, and people crowded around
John and Maya, Samantha Hoyle, Sax Russell and Chalmers.

Frank looked over the crowd at John and Maya. He didn’t recognize the group of
Terrans surrounding them, which made him curious. He made his way across the
platform, and as he approached he saw Maya and John give each other a look. “There’s
no reason this place shouldn’t function under normal law,” one of the Terrans was saying.

Maya said to him, “Did Olympus Mons really remind you of Mauna Loa?”

“Sure,” the man said. “Shield volcanoes all look alike.”

Frank stared over this idiot’s head at Maya. She didn’t acknowledge the look. John
was pretending not to have noticed Frank’s arrival. Samantha Hoyle was speaking to
another man in an undertone, explaining something; he nodded, then glanced involuntarily
at Frank. Samantha kept her back turned to him. But it was John who mattered, John
and Maya. And both were pretending that nothing was out of the ordinary; but the topic of
conversation, whatever it had been, had gone away.

###

Chalmers left the platform. People were still trooping down through the park, toward
tables that had been set in the upper ends of the seven boulevards. Chalmers followed
them, walking under young transplanted sycamores; their khaki leaves colored the
afternoon light, making the park look like the bottom of an aquarium.

At the banquet tables construction workers were knocking back vodka, getting
rowdy, obscurely aware that with the construction finished, the heroic age of Nicosia was
ended. Perhaps that was true for all of Mars.

The air filled with overlapping conversations. Frank sank beneath the turbulence,
wandered out to the northern perimeter. He stopped at a waist-high concrete coping: the
city wall. Out of the metal stripping on its top rose four layers of clear plastic. A Swiss
man was explaining things to a group of visitors, pointing happily.

“An outer membrane of piezoelectric plastic generates electricity from wind. Then
two sheets hold a layer of airgel insulation. Then the inner layer is a radiation-capturing
membrane, which turns purple and must be replaced. More clear than a window, isn't it?”

The visitors agreed. Frank reached out and pushed at the inner membrane. It
stretched until his fingers were buried to the knuckles. Slightly cool. There was faint white